Incentives to Cut Usage

An article published in the WSJ, 12/10/09 B10, discusses an AT&T plan to offer "incentives" that motivate customers to cut back on usage. The problem seems to stem from iPhone users, who consume five to seven times the data as an average subscriber. The incentives may take the form of tiered pricing (which is similar to how California utilities charge for electricity), or by "throttling" a person's connection if the usage hurts nearby users. Also, AT&T indicates that they would provide users more feedback on data consumption, to address the fact that customers don't know how much data they are using.