
T-Mobile caps smartphone users' data at 500 MB/month - dreemteem
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/windows-watch/2011/01/so-apparently-t-mobile-hates-its-customers/index.htm
======
SimonPStevens
Can someone explain to me how "unlimited usage" plans are even allowed to have
a cap at all. I've never understood why this is legal.

Surely you shouldn't be allowed to advertise something as "unlimited" and then
impose a limit in the small print. Is there a reason why this common activity
is permitted at all?

~~~
mikegreenberg
I understood that "unlimited" meant all you can eat with a biggest pipe we can
offer you for the first X Gb, and then we throttle "over the cap" usage for
the rest of the billing cycle. Technically, you can keep using it, but at
reduced speeds.

~~~
SimonPStevens
Makes sense.

But in a slightly different domain, my broadband provider advertises
"Unlimited XMbps broadband" but throttles after 1.5Gb. That's clearly not
"Unlimited XMb/s" That's "1.5Gb XMb/s broadband with unlimited 300Kbps
broadband". Yeah I know broadband speed is a big grey area, and they have all
these getout clauses like service conditions etc etc, but when it comes right
down to it the whole thing just feels like a advertising con.

~~~
lukeschlather
Here in America advertised speed doesn't even have to relate to actual speed.
"Unlimited XMb/s" means "You will never get more than XMb/s, and there's a
cap, but you'll have to figure out what it is on your own. Don't worry, it's
very large."

~~~
steveklabnik
At what point is this false advertising? I see it more like this:

    
    
        Unlimited[1] Internet, at blazing fast Xmbps[2] speeds!
    

1: Subject to a cap, don't worry it's large[3]

2: We did the math, and it's theoretically possible, but you can get 60% of
this speed[5]

3: 'Large' being defined as 'we won't tell you how big it is, or what happens
when you go over. Trust us.'

4: Only at 3am when nobody else is on, with a brand new computer, fresh
install of Windows, speed determined by loading <http://google.com/>

5: Subject to interplanetary alignment, some other conditions may apply.[4]

~~~
lukeschlather
Has anyone tried suing? The figures so blatantly misrepresent the service
provided that it seems like a shoe-in for a victory if you got enough people
on board for a class-action.

------
eftpotrm
Another customer who's fed up with this. I went with T-Mobile just over a
month ago knowing they had other limitations - worse coverage and slower data
rates - specifically because they had good data terms. Now this isn't true,
and I _will_ be kicking up a fuss about this in the effort to get either this
rescinded or my contract cancelled without penalty (for which I'm quite happy
to return the phone provided under it).

T-Mobile, a thought experiment for you. You've decided you only want to
provide me with half of a key service that you agreed to when I agreed to the
contract. How about I reciprocate and only want to provide you with half of
the payment I said I would? Would that be OK too?

~~~
mike-cardwell
In the places I travel to in the Midlands and Lincolnshire, I've always found
T-Mobile to have the best 3G network. In comparison to O2, Vodafone and Orange
anyway.

I'm on T-Mobile PAYG and I currently buy a £20 booster once every 6 months
which gives me 1GB of data per month. So effectively £3.33/month for 1GB of
data. Which I thought was _brilliant_. I wont be happy if this drops to 500MB
(although it's not obvious it will), but it's still a pretty good deal
relative to other networks...

~~~
eftpotrm
Interesting, the wording when I was reading up on all this was that data on
PAYG was still being bought monthly. If I'd known that sort of deal was
available I might well have gone for it - I'm already carrying a netbook most
of the time so the need for a smartphone as well isn't enormous, if the data
can be had separately so cheaply.... Oh well.

Overall though, I've not been so impressed by the data network. Slower than
one might hope and too many odd times when it's claiming 3G signal but sites
simply aren't responding with usable speed. Primary usage further south than
you in Beds/Bucks but with some in Derbyshire too.

~~~
mike-cardwell
It's detailed on this page as "6 months internet access":

<https://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/payg/boosters/>

I'm generally more concerned with low latency than high bandwidth on my mobile
connection. I tend to use SSH on my phone on a fairly regular basis and I've
found T-Mobiles network to be very low latency in comparison to others.

------
teilo
This is UK-only at present it seems, but I have to think it's coming to the
USA soon enough.

Yet another reason to switch to Verizon next month. Yeah, not a lot better,
but they'll have the iPhone at least, with personal hotspot (just like my
Nexus One).

~~~
stanleydrew
But, unlike with your Nexus One, it will cost you $20+ per month to use your
personal hotspot.

------
peteri
This could be a monster screwup, my phone contract has 1GB data limit, for an
extra 5GBP (7.5USD) per month I get boosted upto 3GB, the ability to
officially use my phone for tethering and a proper HSDPA+ data rate. Since I
go off site and work in Police facilities where the odds of me being able to
connect to their network is NIL this is an important feature for me.

Apparently (this is unconfirmed properly) I may well find the FUP limit for me
being dropped to either 1GB or 500MB depending on who you ask. While most
months I don't get near to the FUP if I'm doing a lot of work onsite then it's
likely I'll bust 500MB but I can't see 1GB being all that likely. TMobile FUP
isn't too bad as when you break it they don't hit you with excess data fees
but I'm hacked off with this and will move when my contract is up in April (It
doesn't seem worth the hassle of arguing) For folks with an Android phone they
were forced to get the 3GB upgrade which was by far the most generous of the
UK networks recently. Most networks previously have grandfathered you until
the expiry of your contract (or you renew) which is at least fair.

It's not entirely obvious if this means that tmobile have accidently broken
the contract with a lot of android phone owners who can now walk away from
tmobile and get a cheaper deal elsewhere (I happen to think yes). I've had no
notification yet of this change so I wonder if it's been put on hold while the
lawyers rethink it.

~~~
mike-cardwell
No contract has been broken because existing contracts aren't affected:
[http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/help-and-
support/index?page=ho...](http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/help-and-
support/index?page=home&cat=DATA_CHANGES)

------
ZoFreX
There is a lot of FUD flying around over this issue. Hopefully I can dispel
some of it.

Firstly, it's a fair usage policy, not a hard limit. You don't get charged for
over-use with a FUP. With my contract (which is with Orange), if I go over the
FUP a little bit, nothing happens. If I take the piss then they will ask me to
upgrade to a larger data package, or use less, or lose it.

Secondly, the "T-Mobile says no videos or downloads on your mobile" idea isn't
entirely correct. If you hit the 500MB limit in a month, _your internet
continues to work on your phone!_ However, streaming video and other data
heavy activities will not work once you are past the limit.

Lastly, it's really, really hard to use 3GB of data on a mobile phone. I have
3G watchdog installed on my Droid and the only time I've come close to 500MB
is when I was tethering. 500MB doesn't sound like a lot these days, but on a
mobile phone it really is plenty. My usage over the last 6 complete months is
as follows: 295, 316, 388, 166, 407, 211 (all figures in megabytes) and I use
my phone pretty heavily. YMMV of course.

However, I would understand anyone being upset by these changes. I hope Ofcom
finds in the consumers' favour and the change is repealed, or people are
allowed to get out of their contracts early with no penalty. The way T-Mobile
has handled this, from the "announcement" (or lack thereof), to telling people
what their smartphones are and aren't for, is a lesson in how not to do
things.

~~~
omh
_Lastly, it's really, really hard to use 3GB of data on a mobile phone_

I've just been looking at an upgrade and found that I've been using about 1GB
a month. This is mainly through streaming radio as I travel to work, and if my
commute was longer (or it wasn't half underground!) I could easily use 2-3GB
on radio alone.

Incidentally, I used to use FM radio for this but since I got an iPhone this
isn't an option!

~~~
ZoFreX
Using Spotify every day is one of the biggest factors in my usage, but I never
got over 500MB. Can you get Spotify on iPhone? One of the big bandwidth savers
is that you can download your playlists to your phone, so the songs only have
to be downloaded once (You can cache up to ~3000 songs like this). You can set
it to only sync when on wifi, so you'll have all your songs when you're out
and about (and underground!) without using so much of your 3G bandwidth.

~~~
steveklabnik
> Can you get Spotify on iPhone?

The problem is not the iPhone, it's that you can't get it in the US.

------
gst
500 MB is a joke.

I currently pay 4 Euros per GB per month. That's it - no other fees at all
(meaning: I do not need to combine this with a voice plan, I get voice for 4
Eurocents per minute [or alternatively 9 euros for 1000 minutes], and I don't
have any other fixed costs).

1 GB is more than enough for me, but there's also another plan that costs 9
Euros per months and gives you 9 GB (per month).

~~~
drivebyacct2
_4 Euros per GB per month_

My mouth is agape. I would kill for a fair, per-GB smartphone plan here in the
United States. $10/GB, no matter whether it's your phone, your
tablet/netbook/laptop tethered to your phone, etc.

~~~
rue
The U.S. prices really are ridiculous – what about Canada?

Also on the .eu side, I pay 13.90€/mo for an unlimited and uncapped dual-SIM
data plan, i.e. phone and mobile broadband. The regular phone plan is an
additional 0.66€/mo + 0.066€ per text or minute (I chose no package since I
use those very little).

~~~
drivebyacct2
That's seriously unbelievable. Honestly, can you hook me up with a link that
has some deets? I'm just in shock. What a racket.

~~~
gst
Here's the Austrian provider that I use: <http://www.bob.at/> (but there are
also other cheap providers here such as <http://yesss.at/>). Both providers
act as MVNO (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator>)
using the net of a larger provider - therefore you typically have a very good
wireless coverage.

The phones of both provides are sold unlocked per default and all providers
here use compatible frequency ranges for GSM and UMTS. That means that you
don't have any problems using a phone from one provider with another provider.
Plans of those providers also do not have any "minimum duration" - so you can
quit at any time (although there's not really a reason for this, as most of
the plans do not have monthly fixed costs, but only the variable costs).

Of course there are also other, more expensive providers with things like
minimum contract durations and so on. But unless you want to buy a subsidized
iPhone there's not really a reason to use them.

------
mortice
I'd be upset, but T-Mobile failed to get an upgrade smartphone to me within 2
months of my order and so I switched to Vodafone and got it within 3 days.

Full story, for the interested:

I had recently moved home and tried to use T-Mobile's website to update my
address. Unfortunately, it had one of those forms which _require_ you to enter
a postal code and select the correct address from the results of a postal code
lookup, with no way to manually correct it. Since the postal code lookup
didn't give my address, I chose to call T-Mobile's customer service number to
get the address changed at the same time as asking for an upgrade.

I spoke to one customer service representative to update the address,
confirming very clearly that they had the correct address, and then asked to
be put through to the upgrades department. After negotiating the upgrade, I
asked whether it would be dispatched to the new address I had just given them
and was assured that it would, within the next week.

A week and a half later, the phone had not arrived and I hadn't heard
anything, so I called again to find out the status of the order, and was told
that the phone had been dispatched to a non-existent address as that was what
T-Mobile had on file for me. In fact, it was the incorrect address suggested
by the postal code lookup service which I had specifically called to have
corrected. Note also that T-Mobile had on record that the phone could not be
delivered and neglected to contact me.

After updating my records (finally) to the correct address, T-Mobile told me
they couldn't send out another phone as stock was limited and that they
couldn't simply send the erroneously sent handset to the correct address once
it returned to them because that "wasn't how their system worked".

Another month of going round in circles with inept customer support reps and I
was gone. Next time I won't be so patient.

------
kilian
Here in the Netherlands, "unlimited" data transfer remains T-mobile's only
competitive advantage over other carriers now carrying the iPhone. I hope they
will keep this in mind for a long time to come.

------
eps
> _downloading files, streaming music and watching videos should be done on
> your home broadband. You know, those things that people bought their shiny
> new iPhone or Android handset specifically to do._

I am one of these people and I do not download files, stream music or watch
videos on the iPhone. I do use it extensively including the Internet browsing
over 3G and never had my monthly usage go over few hundred megs.

Being a busy adult I also suspect that I am actually in the _majority_ here.
Just sayin'

~~~
potatolicious
Heaven forbid that people use their phones to do multimedia things! Who needs
advances like being able to catch up on TV news while on your way to work, or
using a smart DJ service like Pandora? Or even sneaking in last night's
episode of [insert show here] on a particularly long commute?

Pshaw, clearly all of that is just for bored teenagers. No reasonably
effective, busy adult would have use for anything but HTML and email!

Sorry for the snarky tone, but your implication that busy adults have no need
for all of these data-intensive apps is somewhat insulting.

------
mike-cardwell
[http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/help-and-
support/index?page=ho...](http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/help-and-
support/index?page=home&cat=DATA_CHANGES)

"There will be no change to the data packages for existing customers for the
duration of their contract"

This is for new users only or people upgrading. It _doesn't affect existing
contracts_.

~~~
salvadors
The original change _was_ for existing contracts too. They've since backed off
from that and now only apply it to new contracts.

------
duke_sam
I'm surprised they are acting like this in the UK. There's a much better
choice of carriers in Europe and you don't have any problems with different
wireless standards (GSM vs CDMA).

I knew the choice in Ireland was pretty awful but I figured competition in the
UK would keep dick moves like this in check.

~~~
halo
The UK has the same amount of carriers/networks as the US: four. They do all
use GSM, though.

------
JoeAltmaier
Wireless limits have to be hit some day. Each tower supports one bandwidth-
worth of traffic no matter how many users are in that area. Imagine a wired
network with hundreds of people on one switch.

Of course they are handling it badly. But its not the case that they have any
simple recourse - a successful ad campaign resulted in oversubscribed
bandwidth. They can install more towers - lag time: months or years to get the
right-of-way. They can improve cacheing etc on their end. And they can get
folks to use it less.

~~~
tomjen3
They will have to buy it from some other company then: if they don't have the
bandwith, they shouldn't sell it.

~~~
jonhohle
Not only that, but more users for them means more money to buy hardware and
upstream bandwidth and hopefully some profit. That's the reason people are
paying them.

Perhaps telecom is different than most markets, but more users generally
drives costs down, not up.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Wireless bandwidth is absolutely limited - there is only one "over-the-air"
channel. Well, one per tower, kind of.

Then, to buy from somebody else you have to presuppose some open, free market
with excess bandwidth. That doesn't exist today.

~~~
jonhohle
Agreed, there is only so much that can be fixed with hardware (hardware would
help spotty coverage in the US, for example).

As has been stated earlier, if they can't provide it, they shouldn't be
selling it (and if the laws of physics don't permit what they are selling,
they shouldn't be selling it).

------
stcredzero
Here's what I've done:

    
    
        - Unlocked iPhone 
          (I bought a Canadian one, but you can also jailbreak.)
        - Clear 4G mobile hotspot
    

Between this and onsite WiFi, I have all the mobile broadband that I'd want.

After reading the article, I'm considering moving from my T-Mobile monthly
service to AT&T GoPhone. I can buy minutes and megabytes for emergency use and
maintain this for very little cost. (Which I'm free to do, since I've refused
to have a contract.)

------
maeon3
Already they are chipping away at net nutrality by sniffing around what you
are doing on THEIR Internet. They are becoming gate-keepers for what kinds of
content can pass through their shiny gates.

It is only a matter of time until this turns into finer and finer gradient of
what applications/features/utilities you can and can't use at any given time.

