If you happen to be over in the USA and use the Boost Mobile prepaid network it appears that if you uses more than 2.5GB of data a month you will soon see your data being throttled, as that is exactly what Sprint Boost Mobile is going to do as of the beginning of next year and follows that same throttling that Sprint put in place on their Virgin Mobile prepaid network last year.

Boost Mobile has let their customers know about this data throttling via their official Facebook page, which says that as of the 20th of January 2013 their monthly unlimited plans will deliver 2.5GB of full speed data and after that will be slowed to just 3G speeds of 256kbps.

As such Boost Mobile customers that go over that 2.5GB allowance will probably experience slower file downloads, streaming media and page loading, and full 3G/4G speeds will be reinstated when the customer’s new monthly plan starts.

However Boost Mobile has tired to reassure their customers that 2.5GB is quite a lot of data a month and as such they don’t expect many of their customers to actually reach that 2.5GB.

Apparently this change to the Boost Mobile monthly data allowance might have been timed to coincide with Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile introducing their first 4G enabled smartphones, which is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2013.

The firm also gives an example of what that 2.5GB data means to allay any concerns by stating that it is roughly 400,000 mobile internet page views, 91 hours of streaming music, 20 hours of viewing video clips, and about 90,000 emails without attachments per month.

Apparently Virgin began throttling data speeds for their customers way back in March, and word is Boost Mobile will be notifying their customers about the throttling by delivering a text message when the customer reaches 85% of that 2.5GB and again when they reach the limit.

Verizon and AT&T use cap usage but do not throttle, whilst T-Mobile used to throttle for some years but then reintroduced an unlimited unthrottled data data service recently, whilst Sprint doesn’t actually throttle the speed on their LTE and CDMA data service which is also available to prepaid customers.

So there you go if you are a Boost Mobile prepaid customer you now know that come January your data usage will be throttles if your hit that 2.5GB mark.