Going by a Wednesday announcement by Ralph de la Vega, president and chief executive of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, AT&T is working out some ways to restrict excessive data usage by some iPhone customers.

Adding that the carrier has yet to work out a concise strategy for curtailing excessive data usage, de la Vega said that "incentives" would be introduced to persuade customers to curb their data usage. He also added that the incentives, which will likely become available early next year, will not affect the majority of the AT&T subscribers.

Informing analysts that almost 40 percent of AT&T's data usage can be credited to merely 3 percent of its customers, de la Vega said that though AT&T is making requisite endeavors to add capacity, it also intends educating its customers about data consumption, hoping that they will restrain their usage.

While the wireless industry is struggling with the ever-increasing use of data services that require more bandwidth, AT&T in particular finds itself in a tight spot because it is the exclusive US carrier for the Apple iPhone, which millions of Americans use.

Ralph de la Vega said: "What we are seeing in the US today in terms of smartphone penetration, 3G data, nobody else is seeing in the rest of the planet. The amount of growth and data that we are seeing in wireless data is unprecedented."