What is "premium data"? Many carriers advertise that as a feature yet no one is clearly defining what it is.
Carriers want you to be very scared when you run out of "premium data".
Lets look at AT&T postpaid offerings:
AT&T UNLIMITED PREMIUM℠ PLAN - "Unlimited talk, text, & high-speed data that can’t slow down based on how much you use" which is unlimited premium data.
AT&T UNLIMITED EXTRA® PLAN - "Unlimited talk, text, data + 50GB of Premium Data. After 50GB, AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds if the network is busy."
AT&T UNLIMITED STARTER® PLAN - "Unlimited talk, text & data. AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds if the network is busy."
Only Premium plan offers unlimited premium data. Extra has 50gb of it, and Starter has NO premium data. What does it all mean?
Every network has a capacity limit based on chanels of wireless connectivity and connection to the cell site. For example, if the backhaul to the cell cite has capacity of 10GB/s that is the maximum bandwith for all users connected. Now if you have enough users to exceed total of 10 GB/s throughput non-premium users have their speeds throttled and "premium" users should get faster speeds. But what if there is not too many people connected? In reality I find my "non-premium" data just fine. I don't see a difference when streaming audio or video. So in reality it does not matter.
