AT&T said that as of 1 October 2011, it will reduce the data speeds for the top five percent of the heaviest data users on its unlimited data plans, noting that to fall into this group “you have to use an extraordinary amount of data in a single billing period.” In a statement, the company said that this alone will not solve its spectrum shortage or network capacity issues, and that “nothing short of completing the T-Mobile merger will provide additional spectrum capacity to address these near term challenges.”