BARCELONA—Why can't we have nice things? Virgin Mobile today choked-down its once-unlimited Broadband2Go 3G offering to a mere 2.5GB/month, saying that overwhelming demand for its MiFi hotspots and USB modems basically used up all of the company's Internet. "[It's] due to the popularity of the unlimited plan," Virgin Mobile spokeswoman Corinne Nosal said.
Virgin, which is Sprint's prepaid subsidiary, rocked the nation last year by offering truly unlimited 3G Internet access for $40/month. The company choked that back to 5GB in February, citing overloaded Internet.
But apparently, even 5GB is too much. Older customers who subscribed before today will be able to stay with 5GB. But anyone signing up for a new Virgin Mobile broadband plan starting today will get their speeds reduced once they use 2.5GB/month.
"When customers reach the threshold of 2.5GB, they may experience slower page loads, file downloads and streaming media until the end of that monthly cycle," Nosal said.
Virgin's moves highlight one of the lesser-known practices in wireless Internet: companies massively oversell their available capacity. As Virgin and its ilk sell 5GB plans and 1500-minute buckets, they're calculating that only a tiny percentage of those subscribers will actually use all of those megabytes or minutes. If more people try to get what they paid for than planned, boom! the network gets overcrowded.
A similar lack of planning happened with the unexpected popularity of data on AT&T's iPhone. But rather than choking back iPhone Internet limits, AT&T let its customers suffer dropped calls and data connections in some major cities until the carrier improved its network.
"We are taking these steps so we can continue to provide as much flexibility as possible, to remain competitive and provide our customers with the best service and value we can," Virgin's Nosal said.