American telecommunications company, Sprint, has said it will throttle speeds for "unlimited data" customers after they use 23GB in a month.

Chief technology officer Dr. John Saw notes unlimited subscribers will, as their plans state, be able to use an unlimited amount of data per month, but may see connection speeds drop when they hit the 23GB mark. The quality of service technique operates in real time, meaning throttling is applied based on current network conditions, he said.

However, the company noted that what it calls "prioritization" will apply only in locations and times where the network is constrained, thus subscribers should still be able to use their phones at normal speeds most of the time.

The prioritization windows are calculated every 20 milliseconds, and throttled users will see services restored to normal operating speeds once traffic conditions at a particular cell site clear.

With 23GB of data users can stream 60 hours of music, 50 hours of video, send 6,000 emails with attachments, view 1,500 Web pages and post 600 photos, according to the metrics provided by Sprint.

America's AT&T;, Verizon and Sprint all throttle data to some extent. After doing away with unlimited plans years ago, Verizon and AT&T; were first to initiate connection slowdowns on consumers with grandfathered-in all-you-can-eat subscriptions.

T-Mobile, which like Sprint still markets unlimited data options, also adheres to a soft data cap set at 23GB, and in August said it would act hard on consumers abusing the system.