
T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans - lobster_johnson
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13330158/t-mobile-unlimited-data-settlement-fine-discount-free-data
======
derekp7
Here's the thing, I would much rather have reasonable throttling with
unlimited data, then either $10.00 per GB, or worse yet, multiple times that
as an overage penalty. Especially with a family plan when the non-bill-payers
on the plan don't understand overage fees.

So the way I understood it (at least under the plan that I signed up for
before "binge-on" was added), T-Mobile would charge $20 (on top of the regular
voice/text plan) for 'unlimited' data. Then, after something like 25GB, they
would prioritize data from users that were under that limit if there was
congestion. So to me that is entirely reasonable in light of the fact that
radio waves have physical limits on how many people can consume high bandwidth
at the same time.

Of course, it would be nice if they spelled out all of this in their
advertising and product literature (and if this was still the case with their
current plans).

~~~
gshulegaard
> Of course, it would be nice if they spelled out all of this in their
> advertising and product literature (and if this was still the case with
> their current plans).

Which is ultimately the problem here. They didn't spell this out or make
explicit this practice.

I agree with you, it makes sense, and I find it acceptable...but they
definitely should have made it obvious and well documented.

~~~
67726e
Exactly. As an unlimited customer who has used, at times, upwards of 60GB /
month this was never made clear and their representatives have absolutely lied
about. When I signed up I was skeptical as any so I spent a good bit of time
grilling them, and this was never mentioned anywhere. I've never heard of it
in any advertisement nor seen any disclaimer. I've received no warning about
their activity. I switched over about four years ago and have been
wholeheartedly recommending it as a good carrier, but things like this
severely diminish T-Mobile's luster in my mind.

~~~
maxerickson
They now have _On all plans, during congestion the top 3% of data users (
>26GB/mo.) may notice reduced speeds until next bill cycle. Video typically
streams on smartphone/tablet at DVD quality (480p). Tethering at Max 3G
speeds._ in the small print.

I wish they would just not say "Unlimited" if there is going to be a
disclaimer, but the current situation is at least fairly clear.

~~~
CountSessine
_I wish they would just not say "Unlimited" if there is going to be a
disclaimer, but the current situation is at least fairly clear._

Marketing and sales is the root of all evil.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that 'unlimited' in the case of
data/telecom services should be a controlled and regulated word, much like
'organic' and 'natural' are in food.

~~~
bravura
I believe it already is regulated.

You can't falsely advertise.

The only reason that "natural" and "organic" are regulated terms is because
they are nebulous. But "unlimited data" is not nebulous, it's clear cut.

IANAL

~~~
maxerickson
There's obvious limits.

1 month multiplied by the maximum speed of the technology, the actual capacity
of the network, the fact that they throttle heavy users, etc.

~~~
afandian
Then you don't use the word.

~~~
ambrice
Which word do you use? "The Data Plan Limited By Maximum Speeds, Current
Network Capacity, and Amount of Time in a Given Month" doesn't fit on the
pamphlet. Do we really need to go full lawyer on everything? I think people
understand that "Unlimited Data" doesn't mean infinite speed.

~~~
maxerickson
Given the disclaimer I posted, you could advertise "25 GB of high speed"...

And if such a small number hurts them in the feels, they could make their
network better so that they could say a bigger number.

~~~
ambrice
But more like 25 GB of equal QoS prioritization with other customers which may
or may not be high speed, followed by reduced QoS prioritization in relation
to other customers which still may be high speed but less likely.

------
SteveNuts
It's bullshit that they can offer consumers an option to buy accessories at a
discount (which they probably still make a profit on) as a reparation for
this.

I want direct monetary compensation.

~~~
koolba
> It's bullshit that they can offer consumers an option to buy accessories at
> a discount (which they probably still make a profit on) as a reparation for
> this.

If this were a class action, would the lawyers accept getting paid a truckload
of iPhone 7 cases?

~~~
notyourwork
No they would negotiate all parties included in the class action suit get
iPhone cases and T-mobile is responsible for paying all legal fees for
attorney representation.

------
drbawb
I'm a little saddened to see the direction T-Mobile is headed with their
plans. When I switched to Project Fi last year my T-Mobile unlimited plan was
$70/mo. That included actual HD video, and LTE tethering.

Now the equivalent plan (T-Mobile One+) is $90/mo, and that just gets you
"unlimited HD day passes" which you have to remember to toggle every day if
you want video that isn't 480p.

What's even scarier to me is that they're not alone. Sprint has opted for a
nearly identical pricing structure w/ "Unlimited Freedom" and "Unlimited
Freedom Premium." As an aside: the idea of "premium" freedom makes me giggle,
I'd love to have a beer with the marketing exec that came up with that
mouthful.

~~~
codemac
My inability to "script" my phone is really starting to hinder my hacker-ness.

This seems like something you could build into your phone. Every day when you
first interact with your phone, have tasker or something else fire off a job
that auto-enables your unlimited hd day passes.

Does anyone have good introduction documentation to either: writing scripts
for tasker, or writing your own android applications when you know ZERO java?

~~~
emidln
Scripting Layer 4 Android provides a reasonable facade for a lot of APIs that
are available to a ton of languages via a socket. It has out of the box
support for perl and python as well as some other languages.

[1] [https://github.com/damonkohler/sl4a](https://github.com/damonkohler/sl4a)

~~~
icebraining
And you can use Tasker to launch a sl4a action every day, or when you connect
to a certain network, etc.

------
davesque
$48 million seems like a slap on the wrist. T-Mobile made $32 billion in
revenue in 2015 and just posted $479 million in profit. I wish I could feel
like these fines actually acted as a deterrent.

~~~
praxulus
Comparing the fine to total revenue and total profit is completely
meaningless. What's relevant is how much they were saving in infrastructure
costs by throttling those users.

E.g. If they saved less than $24 million and had a >50% chance of getting
caught, this works perfectly well as a deterrent no matter how large there
overall profits were.

~~~
roymurdock
Cost is only one side of the equation. You also have to factor in the
approximate value of the revenue generated by subscribers who were misled into
believing that they had unlimited, unthrottled data, and who might have
selected a competitor's service had the secret quota been honestly advertised.

~~~
MichaelBurge
Maybe, but the revenue has to have the price of its competitor subtracted, and
the remainder weighted by the percentage of the service that they would use
the 'unlimited' data for.

So if choice 1 is $70/month for 25GB and $10 for 10GB afterward, and choice 2
is $90/month for 'unlimited' with an expectation to use 45GB, then both
choices are equivalent.

If the choice 2 then reduces the utility of the service by 50% past 25GB, then
the customer has paid $20 for $10 of utility, and so the loss should be marked
as $10.

And if you buy choice 2 because it says 'unlimited', but you only use 5GB,
then you never actually lost anything due to their deceit.

I'd expect a similar calculation to hold up here: For each customer, sum up
the number of throttled hours over the number of total hours to get the
"throttling percentage". Also, assign each zip code a 'statistical competitor'
by combining all competing services using some model. Then multiply the
throttling percentage by the difference in price multiplied by the percentage
of utility lost.

------
mc32
I feel the problem is that marketing terminology is ill-regulated, so
companies can make "natural", "unlimited", "fresh", "home-made", "organic",
"life-time", "guaranteed", "green", etc. mean whatever they want them to mean
and allows enough cover that consumers assume it means one thing while to
industry if means quite another or very narrow interpretation.

~~~
baby
This is rooted in the American culture: Americans are already used to things
like this. For example here if you go to a restaurant, you will usually pay
30% more than the price that is displayed (tips + taxes).

~~~
nkozyra
But that's an example of the opposite. Americans (and really, everyone in
modern societies) might be used to assumed, hidden costs.

If we buy a thing for $10, we expect that to be a baseline, as we may pay tax
or gratuity on top of that. If I go to the store and buy something for $9.99,
my mental calculation is that it may actually cost $10.70 or so with tax. If I
go to a restaurant and buy a $20 steak, my expectation is that will probably
cost $25.

But if I go to a restaurant and order a steak and they serve me a soy burger,
that will not be acceptable. An "unlimited" plan not, in fact, being unlimited
is different than what you've described.

~~~
baby
The point was that Americans are going through a false advertising fatigue.
The tendency is to accept not getting what was advertised.

------
JoshTriplett
For anyone finding this ruling confusing as I initially did: this isn't about
T-Mobile unlimited plans that slow down from LTE to EDGE speeds after a
certain amount of data; that was well-advertised, and not apparently at issue.
This is about a different, entirely unadvertised process by T-Mobile on
unlimited plans of de-prioritizing traffic entirely after a certain point
(~17GB), making it appear as though the network is simply more congested for
the user after they've used a large amount of data.

------
syphilis2
What is the status on T-Mobile offering unlimited data usage from select
sources (Binge On program)? I can stream as much (well, I guess up to 17Gb)
data as I want so long as it's from their list of approved sources which allow
throttling at 480 resolution. It feels absurd that this is how they operate,
rather than just allowing unlimited data at say 3G speeds (rather than the
throttled data rate which is at most 2G but in practice is unusable).

[http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/10/28/net.neutralit...](http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/10/28/net.neutrality.chart.jpg)

~~~
zeta0134
I'm really surprised this hasn't caused more of a Net Neutrality uproar, since
it's essentially the worst case scenario. If you don't pay T-Mobile to be one
of their approved partners, your service is punished by costing customers more
money for the same amount of data.

~~~
tzs
> If you don't pay T-Mobile to be one of their approved partners [...]

Partners don't pay to be included in Binge On. Requirements to be included in
Binge On: [https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tmo/en-g/pdf/BingeOn-
Vi...](https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tmo/en-g/pdf/BingeOn-Video-
Technical-Criteria-March-2016.pdf)

------
bdavisx
It's great that the FCC does this for cell carriers, but they still are
letting the data caps apply on home connections, which is going to do nothing
except increase profits and decrease innovation.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
This is completely false.

If you look at how businesses generally work, they're trying to get a certain
amount of revenue in order to balance their budget and make a profit. Then
they decide how to get it.

Data caps are _fantastic_. Because it means when they're raising their prices,
they're charging the users who most use it, rather than just raising the price
for everyone.

If you're being asked to pay for overage on a wired line plan, it means you're
a 1%er in the Internet world. You're a burden on the system with how much you
use, and you're upset you're being asked to pay a little more than everyone
else.

Basically, people opposed to data caps are like Wall Street execs complaining
their taxes are higher than everyone else's.

~~~
drbawb
No. Data caps (and bandwidth limits to some extent) are fundamentally broken.

My water company doesn't shut off my water because I took too many long
showers this month. My gas company doesn't shut the valve because I had a few
extra loads of laundry to run through the dryer. My electric company doesn't
kill the lights because I was working on my car and used the 220V in the
garage a lot this month.

Instead they install a meter at the inlet, charge me for _exactly_ what I use
(and _when_ I use it!!!) and then they can plan their capacity based around
their billings. If I need more inlets (too much current at the mains breaker,
not enough gas or water pressure, etc.) then they charge me a fair price for
the hardware and installation and bill that new inlet in the exact same way.

It's simple, transparent, and completely controllable by me. (If I don't want
to rack up a larger bill this month I just close the inlet.)

\---

Caps and overages are a _very different_ model: they are charging me _much
more_ than the normal cost of service once I cross some threshold or cutting
off my service. That'd be like my power company saying: "you've used more than
the average 901kWH, so you're going to have to pay the industrial rate on the
rest of your consumption this month."

More importantly, since private companies are running the show, we have no
real insight into what average data consumption for the populace even looks
like. You take it on _their word_ that the plans they market align w/ the
reality of average use. We can't verify that's the case because they don't
legally have to publish it.

Essentially these companies could be telling you "640k ought to be enough for
anybody", and you're arguing that it's perfectly reasonable for them to say
anyone using >640k is the top 3% and should be billed at a premium. That's not
the sort of thinking that pushes the state of the art forward, in fact it's
actively harmful and disincentivizes upgrades to the network.

Their pricing model doesn't line up with the reality of a band-limited
service, and they don't give us nearly enough information to verify their
claims of what constitutes an "above average" consumer of data.

\---

\- Wireline service should be billed as a metered utility.

\- Wireless service should have a fixed access fee to cover the cost of
expanding the network (as well as providing E911, etc.) along with a variable
access fee that is billed as a metered utility.

Anything else is borderline fraud, and I'm frankly sick of having to navigate
the minefield of dishonesty that is consumer-grade ISP pricing schemes.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Carriers with caps generally don't shut off your service, they simply charge
you more. So your example of the water company shutting of your water is
facetious.

I definitely would prefer a more even metering method, and I think it should
be granular down to the megabyte. But data caps are a move in that direction,
a very positive move from where we were in the unlimited-but-not-net-neutral
past.

Generally speaking, you are not getting charged for "much more" than the
normal cost of service, if you have picked a good level for your data plan.
Should be just over your usual usage, you might occasionally get an overage
once or twice, but it should round out to be cheaper than having picked a
higher tier every month.

------
jasonjayr
I ..... thought T-Mobile's policy was generally well known? Especially in the
face of a few years ago, At&t hitting up folks for astronomical bills when
iPhones were new, and folks were blasting past their data limits? I've had
data with them since they were VoiceStream, and knew what each data plan
offered.

Anyone who asked, I told them that T-Mobile's policy was _WAY_ more consumer
friendly than the other carriers, especially for someone who absolutely needs
a data connection (and doesn't wander outside their relatively weak coverage)

What if the FCC mandated some kind of 'nutrition label' for ISP plans, that
specified the technical points of their service offering? Spell out limits,
min/max latency, best-effort/guaranteed, fair/shaped and what happens when
limits are exceeded? Wouldn't be clearly in their realm of power to regulate
how the these plans are marketed, rather than let the ISP's confuses folks
with ambiguous language?

~~~
Analemma_
It is _now_ , because of this suit. The throttling itself is not the issue- as
other people are pointing out, it's arguably preferable to overage charges or
bandwidth caps- it's the fact that T-Mobile wasn't making this clear to
customers.

~~~
soundoflight
It's also arguably preferable to cutting off a finger!

------
kyledrake
I see the word "unlimited" on a lot of hosting providers. Give me access to
the dd command and we'll see how long that theory lasts.

I honestly find it, always and everywhere, to be deceptive marketing. There is
no such thing as unlimited resources.

~~~
chc
Yes, but there is such a thing as not placing a limit on the usage of a
resource. I don't see it as deceptive if that's actually what they're doing.
Sometimes "unlimited" is just a marketing term, other times it seems like a
genuine statement of intent from the provider. Obviously I could be a dick and
try to prove them wrong, but why?

~~~
kyledrake
Because you can't capacity plan when your provider says "unlimited" and then
there is actually a limit, except because they don't tell you what it is, you
don't know what it is until you hit it.

I understand that the word unlimited makes people feel good, but it shouldn't.
Nothing is unlimited, ever. Just because they're not telling you what it is
doesn't mean it isn't there.

Unmetered bandwidth that is capped at a gigabit or is physically incapable of
going faster is not unlimited either. It's been throttled to only allow you to
download a certain amount each month. It is also not unlimited, unless you
consider a throttle to not be a limit.

Most cable modems, by the way, can go 3-5 times faster without the artificial
throttles put on them by the providers. So even before Comcast started doing
their stupid 1TB cap, they were already throttling your internet connection
way below the possible speeds of the device.

~~~
chx
That artificial throttle is not so artificial; they are charging you a lower
amount because you are using less resources. The "last mile" is almost always
bandwidth constrained, if you use less, then you pay less.

------
DigitalJack
When the government sues for stuff like that, where does the money go? I mean,
it's a punishment to have to pay, sure, but why does the government get the
money? Shouldn't the people being screwed be the ones getting that?

~~~
amadeusw
> T-Mobile will pay for those benefits through a $35.5 million consumer
> benefit program, with an additional $7.5 million paid directly to the US
> Treasury and $5 million in services and equipment provided to American
> schools.

~~~
DigitalJack
Thanks. Glad to read that, but even 7.5 mil to the government seems like a
conflict of interest.

~~~
SparkyMcUnicorn
Not much different from traffic citations, I guess.

------
erikb
Instead of paying fines they should refund their customers for things like
that.

------
StillBored
Which was known to people a couple years ago. Also for at least the last
couple years their plans have actually said something to the effect "unlimited
data, only the first X GBs at full LTE/4G data speeds". So if you didn't know
this then you were probably living under a rock.

Of course, given that my wife is the one who has to deal with the kids
watching neflix on her phone, when you hit the limit, the result is frequently
the same as just getting cut off if you have to wait 30 seconds to load
google.com or much worse for sites with a lot of content.

------
gingerlime
I'm still confused why the largest data plan in Germany is 5gb (with some
options to top-up). And all data plans are bandwidth throttled after you use
your quota. There's no unlimited options at all.

~~~
germanier
This not true (anymore). Telekom offers its unlimited "MagentaMobil XL
Premium" for around 200€ a month.

Plans for more than 5GB have been available for quite some time and if one
were calling the business hotline all networks could offer even larger non-
public plans.

~~~
gingerlime
200€ a month?!

well, it's a start.

