No, Apple isn’t throttling your iPhone or iPad data connection

A bunch of stories popped up yesterday glomming onto a blog post that has since been pulled. They stated that Apple, or the carriers, or a combination thereof were throttling your iPhone’s data connection. Why? Who knows, but the intimation was that some deal had been struck that allowed the carriers control over how fast your phone could connect to the network.

Not only is this not true, it flies in the face of the whole conceit of Apple’s iPhone strategy, which was they gave as little control as possible away. Apple has never allowed carrier cruft in the form of bloatware pre-installed on the device and whatever mucking about there has been (think AT&T’s tethering or Facetime policies) has worked itself out over time and never been supported by Apple.

That’s why I’m glad Brian Klug at Anandtech took the time to debunk this (as I begged him to) rumor. Even though it didn’t look right to us (which is why we didn’t report it), it needed someone with a deep understanding of carrier files and the way that these devices work on a network to make sure the bases were covered.

You can read Klug’s findings and supporting evidence, but this is the money takeaway:

Again, there’s no reason for Apple to want to arbitrarily limit their devices, and the reality is that they don’t, at all, on any version of iPad or iPhone or in any of the carrier bundles they’ve distributed for network operators. If anything, Apple has long been one of the few handset vendors who initially understood the importance of limiting annoying operator customizations. The Carrier Bundles are quite literally the only place in the entire OS they have indirect access (through Apple) to toggles they can play with.

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The full piece is over at Anandtech here.

Image Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images