But when the year-end numbers show a doubling of wireless data traffic from 2010 to 2011 – and you've seen at least a doubling every year since 2007 – the implications are profound.
Over the past five years, AT&T's wireless data traffic has grown 20,000%.
The growth is now driven primarily by smartphones. Add to that new customer additions and the continuing trend of upgrades from feature phones to smartphones, and you have a wireless data tsunami.
What's more, AT&T's efforts to restrict data usage among its customers seem to be working, reining in its hungriest data users. It introduced throttling on its grandfathered unlimited plans in the fall, which is now kicking in at usage levels as low as 2 GB a month.
If AT&T is so network constrained, if 2 GB of monthly usage is too much for its networks, and if it doesn't have the spectrum to meet future demands, then why is it opening up the data spigot, actually encouraging its customers to consume more for an extra $5 a month?
All they know is AT&T service is awful. Which gets them thinking about Sprint or Verizon. It has me thinking about Verizon.
The amount of data usage of our top 5 percent of heaviest users varies from month to month, based on the usage of others and the ever-increasing demand for mobile broadband services. To rank among the top 5 percent, you have to use an extraordinary amount of data in a single billing period.
Of course this just adds to my data, which even though I have a unlimited plan, I'm out of.
I don't understand how providing awful connectivity for potentially 17 million customers is a good idea.
So I have to decide, pay more? Switch companies? Carry around a backup wi-fi hotspot? I'm not sure yet, but this all has me thinking... What do you do when a company wants to get rid of you, but you have limited options?