• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 3, 2011

The same day that Verizon Wireless began taking orders for its much anticipated iPhone, the company also revealed a new congestion management strategy: throttling users.

Verizon quietly posted a notice to its Web site stating that, as of Thursday, it reserves the right to slow down data transfers for consumers who "use an extraordinary amount of data" and fall within the top 5% of data users.

The notice, which was first reported by Boy Genius Report, says that the slowdown could last for the remainder of the users' billing cycle and the next cycle as well -- which could be almost eight weeks total. "Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren't negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users," the notice states.

Verizon's new policy appears permissible under the Federal Communications Commission's new neutrality rules because the company apparently intends to apply the bandwidth limits to all data equally, says Chris Riley, policy counsel at the neutrality advocacy group Free Press. "My first reaction was that it doesn't look like they're discriminating," he says.

The FCC's new neutrality rules prohibit wireless carriers from blocking traffic or competing applications.

But Riley adds that Verizon's policy might be problematic for reasons other than neutrality concerns. Verizon's plan to throttle users for up to two months "feels punitive," given that network congestion often ends in a matter of hours.