And that's the trick: AT&T implemented throttling just after all the dedicated iPhone users upgraded to an iPhone 4S and locked themselves in for another two years.
Disgusting, eh?
You didn't have to lock in. If you paid full price for the iPhone 4s, then when you first plugged it to iTunes, you got a "congratulations, your phone has been unlocked" message, and the phone stopped being carrier locked. This worked since iPhone 4s release day, before the 'official' unlocked phone shipped.
If you'd been on sprint lately you'd know it's because the whole 3g network performs like it's throttled.
that seems like a fair enough complaint, but what about verizon or tmobile?
vzw at least is quite fast, but I believe they both throttle heavy users.
I don't have a choice. It'd be too expensive to switch.