Who’s eating up AT&T’s data capacity? It’s not new customers

What does a mobile network hosting 41.2 million smartphones look like? A network where growth in data traffic far exceeds data revenue growth. AT&T is selling a lot of smartphones and data plans, but even millions of new iPhones customers don’t fully account for the huge spikes in mobile data traffic that AT&T is experiencing.

AT&T’s first quarter earnings numbers show that new smartphone customers aren’t the ones straining its data networks. Rather AT&T’s chickens have come home to roost. Customers are finally starting to consume the big buckets of data AT&T is selling them, taking their fair share of network capacity while not paying more for the privilege. Consequently AT&T is seeing a massive increase in data traffic without seeing a corresponding jump in data revenues. If carriers from the beginning had set reasonable plan tiers that actually reflected how customers consumed data, operators could have gradually lowered prices as their networks became more efficient. It’s probably a stretch to say they would have come off as heroes, but their mobile data policies probably wouldn’t be vilified the way they are today. Instead, they chose to gouge customers by selling them far more gigabytes than they could possibly use. Now that customers are starting to actually use up those gigs, carriers are claiming they’re running out of capacity. Didn’t you guys see this coming?