Virgin Mobile to begin throttling smartphone data speeds on March 23

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Last year prepaid carrier Virgin Mobile announced that it would begin to throttle the speeds of smartphone users that went over a certain threshold of data usage per month. The plan was to enact the new policy in October, but the carrier decided to postpone it until 2012. Now Virgin says that it will begin throttling speeds for users in March.

The policy is similar T-Mobile's for its smartphone data plans, as Virgin Mobile will offer full speed data services through the first 2.5GB of data used in a month, after which users will be limited to 2G speeds of 256Kbps or less until the next billing cycle. The carrier is still offering unlimited data, but there will be consequences for using such a large amount of data in a single month. Virgin says that it will alert users via text message if they are in danger of having their data throughput throttled.

The carrier says that this policy is necessary to ensure that it "can deliver the same quality service you've come to expect from Virgin Mobile." The data-speed throttling is set to take effect on March 23, 2012.