BGR
has learned that AT&T may have plans to offer tiered data services when it launches its Long Term Evolution network later this year. The carrier apparently plans to trial two separate types of tiers alongside its LTE service: speed tiers and data tiers. Speed tiers will provide LTE data service at varying rates of speed depending on the plan a customer selects, similar to land-based broadband services currently offered by ISPs. Data tiers will afford subscribers “data buckets” of varying sizes, similar to the configuration of AT&T’s current data plans.
The carrier may also have plans to give subscribers the option to boost services temporarily for a fee, according to a document provided to BGR. The documents mentions “Top Up Sessions,” which allow users to increase their data allotment for the remainder of a billing cycle, and “Speed Up Sessions,” which will allow subscribers on lower-tier plans to speed up their service for a specific duration. The document does not provide any details in terms of what speeds might be afforded by each tier, nor does it detail how much data will be included with each of the various data bucket sizes. It is also currently unclear how many speed and data bucket options AT&T might intend to offer its LTE subscribers. According to the document, AT&T will begin trials of the aforementioned tiered LTE service plans in May for this year. Hit the jump for an excerpt from the internal AT&T document detailing the tiered data.
