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T-Mobile Starts Going After Heavy Users of Tethered Data
VentureBeat reports that T-Mobile CEO John Legere has announced that T-Mobile will cut off (at least from "unlimited" data plans) customers who gloss over the fine print of their data-use agreement by tethering their unlimited-data phones and grab too much of the network's resources. In a series of tweets on Sunday, Legere says the company will be "eliminating anyone who abuses our network," and complains that some "network abusers" are using 2TB of data monthly. The article says, "This is the first official word from the carrier that seems to confirm a memo that was leaked earlier this month. At that time, it was said action would be taken starting August 17 and would go after those who used their unlimited LTE data for Torrents and peer-to-peer networking."
... what you think it means.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
if "inflammable" and "flammable" mean the same thing then why not "limited" and "unlimited"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Is that not discrimination?
I'm starting to get tired of this mentality from service providers that, just because someone is using their services in ways they didn't expect, they're somehow 'abusing' the service. If you advertise the service as unlimited, it should be unlimited. You shouldn't care that I'm using it to torrent or do whatever.
If you can't provide a truly unlimited service, don't advertise it
So, let me get this straight - an ISP is gonna selectively cut off clients' data plans based on their abuse of: 1. a data cap that from an "unlimited" that is not unlimited, since the user signed a contract that had some sort of fair use policy allowing redefinition of the word "unlimited" by the ISP,for marketing purposes; and 2. Did I read that right about them targeting torrent and p2p users first? Didn't the US just pass a net neutrality law? Isn't protocol-specific "accusing" a type of discrimination punished by law when it concerns American citizens, because it would automatically assume the content these users were trading was illegal without a serious base for such accusation? I mean, seriously. Who gave these corporate douches the power to decide how their service is to be used. It's about time all service providers understand that a user has a right to privacy that goes well beyond his right to sniff on the user's content.
Funny how they will lose their customers. Their executives must be totally stupid.
You mean the word "eliminate", right?
TFA abbreviates the quote from T-Mobile CEO John Legere. Here it is in full:
"Marketing thought we could call it 'unlimited', because that would sell. But then engineering pointed out that our network couldn't support that kind of load. So we had legal work out deals with the handset manufacturers so that the phone would limit data usage anyway. That way, we could call it 'unlimited', but in reality, it would be limited; Clever eh? But our customers noticed, and are downloading apps that hide their tether usage, rooting their phones, writing code to mask their activity, etc. It's all their fault. I mean, obviously we have the right to lie to our customers, and put whatever software we want on their phones. But now they are changing that software! They are thieves I tell you. THIEVES!"
John Legere is not the CEO of T-Mobile, he is the CEO of T-Mobile US, a subsidiary of Deutsch Telekom. This stupid decision should not be held against T-Mobile proper which operates in a number of countries.
I certainly don't condone the weasel words that mobile carriers use to limit "unlimited" plans, and I think selling internet access that can't be used for certain internet applications is just dishonest, but on the other hand, 2TB/month does seem excessive. I don't come anywhere near that on a cable internet connection, despite streaming HD video. Do you guys rsync the internet?
I bought a T-Mobile line last month and used it for a continuous 4 weeks in various places in California. Never for once had I seen LTE in my phone; I wonder how can anyone use 2 TB of data in one month with this extremely slow data service.
2TB of data monthly on mobile is ABSURD to begin with.
I can hardly get 500-600 GiB a month and this is only if I am out of town on vacation for the summer.
I'm with T-Mobile right now. I give them credit for forcing the other carriers to at least pretend to lower the prices on their plans... but it's become apparent to me recently that the way T-Mobile does it is by not training their support personnel *at all*.
T-Mobile recently announced a plan called "10GB North America". It's 4 lines, each with 10GB of data, for $120. And if you sign up before Labor Day, it's $110 because the 4th line is free. Well, I'm having a dickens of a time getting their reps to figure out that there's no way this should amount to $191/month for our four lines (total bill was $226 or thereabouts, but we have one phone on the installment plan).
I have a job - I don't have free hours available to teach these bozos how 3rd grade math works. But I'm going to end up having to print everything out, take time off work, and get those printouts into one of their stores to get this fixed because their phone support and their Twitter support are apparently morons.
#DeleteChrome
They will jerk you around forever. T-mobile consistently makes "errors" in billing backed with totally untrained staff that allows the company not be he held liable. You will receive a forever circle jerk from them trying to fix their billing "errors".
Best way I've found is to write an exact dialogue of the issue and post it in their forum. Be specific about the issue and your attempts to fix it. Normally a moderator will get it fixed, then dump them.
They are total criminals.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Frankly, I could care less about "the fine print" as long as I have a carrier that offers good and consistent coverage. At the end of the day, for me it's just a "phone with benefits." Whoever offers me the best coverage is going to get my business. I even tolerated Verizon's sneaky BS and intentionally crippled devices because they offered reliable service in my somewhat rural area, but now they've clearly oversubscribed their infrastructure to the point where I consistently have connectivity issues. So I'll move on to a carrier that doesn't have that issue. If that happens to be T-MO, then so be it.
to include that you cannot bring class actions against them so they can pull bullshit like this and not get their pants sued off.
unÂlimÂitÂed
ËOEÉ(TM)nËlimidÉ(TM)d/
adjective
not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent.
They should not be allowed to use the word "unlimited" to describe a limited dataplan.
Essentially it's OK to lie if you offer a product but not if you buy it.
It also highlights that operators try to tie specific devices to services instead of managing the "problem" on the server/provider side.
In all it's about being open, not locking in the customer. It's better to be straight with the customer about the fact that there is a ceiling on the usage.
Then there's another question of how the users really are able to run up a traffic volume in the terabyte class. That's actually pretty amazing, but if someone is streaming HD movies I can imagine that it may be chewing away the bytes pretty fast, but according to some a HD movie is about 2GB/hour. So that means 1000 hours for 2TB - and that means that you need to watch movies every hour in a month and still not reach 2TB.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
They will jerk you around forever. T-mobile consistently makes "errors" in billing backed with totally untrained staff that allows the company not be he held liable. You will receive a forever circle jerk from them trying to fix their billing "errors".
Big time. It took forever to A.) get them to recognize that I'd returned a Sony Experia, B.) stop billing me for it, and C.) return the money they'd already improperly collected for it. I had the proof that they'd received the returned phone *and* the email from them stating as such, yet each rep would attempt to put me through the 2-week procedure to verify the phone had been returned. I didn't see any real action on it until I told them that if it wasn't fixed before my next billing date, I was going to stop dealing with them and let the state attorney general and the FTC handle it. They were already on the FTC's shit list for cramming just last year.
On top of that, their coverage maps are "wildly optimistic" at best, and out and out fraudulent IMO. I can reliably get dropped calls *every day* on the way to and from work, in the same places on two different major highways.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Except the 2TB number was a flat out lie. Bet.
it's the lie they're going to use to be able to cut off those who use ~20 gig a month.
Are there added costs to cell providers when people use bandwidth, or is it like cable where once the infrastructure is in place, costs are basically fixed?
It always boggles my mind why any carrier should have any problem with tethering. In fact restricting tethering should be illegal. Usage is usage whether I use it on my phone or on my computer tethered to my phone. It's all the same usage.
Now if "abuse" is the real problem, then go after that. If some guy is using 2TB of data per month does it really matter whether he is doing that on his phone or with a computer tethered to the phone? Because it's just as easy to do it with just the phone as it is with a computer tethered to the phone.
So instead of putting the limitation on a proxy for the real problem, and thereby eliminating a use model that could very well be legitimate and network friendly (i.e. tethered data use of say 100MB/mo. for example), why piss those people off by drawing the wrong line in the sand.
Also, if 2TB/mo. is a limit that you are going to start cutting people off for, then the plan is not *really* unlimited, so stop marketing it that way.
Common sense says that nothing can be advertised as unlimited, because nothing on Earth is unlimited.
I'd have sympathy if they were using, say, 20GB a month, which is still a lot for a phone user...but 2 TB? Come on. I'd rather not have my connection slow because people are torrenting with their phone data.
I have heard of people chewing up that much bandwidth.
Basically they were packrats, torrenting more than they could ever really hope to watch.
Or there was that dude that ran a home server with TB worth of movies (that he seems to have legally owned) that he made available to his family to stream.
There are few of them, but they do exist.
Common sense says that nothing can be advertised as unlimited, because nothing on Earth is unlimited.
No, it doesn't. "Unlimited" has a very well-defined meaning that is obvious for most people. "Unlimited" usage of a 6 Mbit connection means that you can use the full 6 Mbit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (This works out to about 2 TB/mo.)
Obviously, this is bad for the network, which is why offering an "unlimited" wireless plan is an incredibly stupid idea. But that is what T-mobile did. Blaming their customers for their own mistake and calling them "thieves" is pretty low.
Didn't the Supreme court already tell AT&T that unlimited means unlimited?
I agree - especially if tethering is not allowed.
You can use a few GB if you watch a few movies. You can even use 20 or 100 GB if you tether. But 1TB and more is really not typical *private* internet use any more. If people want to serve websites or torrents, they should not do it on their phone.
you know how that one guy on Jurrassic park says like finds a way? well i think this is exactly what he meant. There are no walls or moats that can stop the consumer from doing what they want to do. We all don't even have to be smart hackers and crackers. Once they make a one push root then its spread from corner of the globe to the next and T-mobile is screwed..
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Yes, that guy exists but he wasn't using the phone network to stream his data. He was using a cable (or maybe fiber) network that is better designed to handle these sorts of loads. Unless someone is using their phone to feed data to a PC I'm having a hard time seeing how they use 2TB a month.
Maybe put the profits into infrastructure and not the execs pockets, but its just a thought.
(.)-(.)
The terms are very clear. It's unlimited on your phone, and 7GB of tethering, and it's enforced. People who know this are specifically circumventing the 7 GB limit. People aren't just using a lot of data, they are installing special apps to make tethering data look like phone data. You can't claim ignorance at that point. You know the 7GB limit on tethering and are trying to get around it. It's not OK.
This is not about people innocently using a lot of data on an unlimited plan. This is a plan that offers unlimited phone data (and, so far, they really do mean unlimited) and 7 GB of high-speed tethered data. (After that, it's automatically throttled.) People in question are very aware of that 7 GB cap because they are installing special apps to circumvent its enforcement. The apps make tethered data look like phone data. That's not innocent and not OK.
I'm having a hard time seeing how they use 2TB a month.
P2P network seeding, heavy use of binary newsgroups, constantly streaming video using using Popcorn Time or Netflix, etc. There are ways to chew through that much bandwidth a month.
Blaming their customers for their own mistake and calling them "thieves" is pretty low.
You realize that wasn't actually a real quote, right?
T-mobile, unlike many providers, is actually allowing real and true unlimited data usage on phones. They've always had restrictions on tethering in their terms of service. You may or may not like it, but those are the terms you sign up with. If you don't read the full ToS, that's your fault, not theirs. If you want to violate those ToS, you're the one breaking the agreed-upon deal. Don't be surprised if they say you're not abiding by the agreement and act accordingly. I'm a heavy tethering user. I'm also using a T-mobile unlimited 4G plan, and I intend to keep it. Historically I've used CynaogenMod, which automatically disables the tethering flag, though I'm not using it at the moment. I hope people using CM don't have problems because of this and get in trouble. I wonder if they'll only apply it if you go over the 7GB tethering cap? The numbers they're quoting are really amazing for heavy users. Even when traveling and tethering I rarely break 5GB for ALL data for the whole month.
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My cable isn't limited, and with myself and my two kids watching all kinds of Netflix/YouTube, playing online games, keeping about three machines and a phone for each of updated, I've still never used more than about 500GB per month according to my router.
To use more, you'd have to be downloading 10GB or more movies via torrent or something.
Note the ethic on Slashdot:
- Rich people have an obligation to share their wealth.
- Anyone who earns a paycheck has an obligation to share a large part of it with people who don't work.
- Environmental regulations are needed to enforce equitable sharing of environmental resources.
- But network users who use 10x to 1000x their share of network resources are absolutely entitled to use as much as they want, regardless of the impact on anyone else.
So sharing resources is right and good when it benefits you, but wrong when it costs you. The overriding ethic is essentially "gimme what I want".
It doesn't matter if it's the actual quote or not, the meaning is the same. You paid for unlimited that wasn't unlimited. Since you're using what you bought, we're going to punish you for getting value. When companies only view people as cash machines, they tend to get upset with a negative balance.
Why not? These companies are using our airwaves without paying us, without completing e911, without living up to their ends of the bargains. Please tell me why they shouldn't increase their ability. The market seems to have an unmet need? I thought the market solved everything.
T-Mobile cancelled the daily PAYG plans, so now they're not cheap, they don't have unlimited internet, and their coverage is absolute shit. So why would I use T-Mobile? Even AT&T makes more sense at this point. Thanks for convincing other operators to unbundle phones from plans, T-Mobile. Now you can FOAD and DIAF now that your purpose here has been fulfilled.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your desire to meter harkens back to the bad old days of the 80s and 90s. Thankfully, Net Neutrality makes it infeasible since one cannot readily exempt traffic to recreate CompuServe-era conditions.
Let it die or metering will find itself at the wrong end of regulation.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
All you can eat has a very well defined meaning in that you can sit there and continue to eat as long as you want. Who cares if you spend all of that time eating all of the shrimp and steak at the buffet, I mean they did say all you can eat right? Who cares if all of the other diners don't get a chance to eat because your fat ass slurped it all up.
Thats all I can hear when I see people bitching about wireless providers cracking down on the people who are abusing the network. Let me guess, you guys got pissed off with the never ending movie as well didn't you. Well frankly I am tired of not being able to get any data down because I am surrounded by aholes watching streaming video on their phones.
All you can eat has a very well defined meaning in that you can sit there and continue to eat as long as you want. Who cares if you spend all of that time eating all of the shrimp and steak at the buffet, I mean they did say all you can eat right? Who cares if all of the other diners don't get a chance to eat because your fat ass slurped it all up.
...and then you drive around until three in the morning looking for another open all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant.
...and when you can't find one, you go fishing.
Wow, it looks like a lot of folks descended on this thread just to attack unlimited data or tethering.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I have had an unlimited data plan on T-Mobile since May of this year (I called in advance of an upcoming conference and they said it would be about the same price for unlimited as the upgrade I wanted).
SO I get to the conference, and I'm streaming video and so forth and a few days later tethering stops working. Data on the phone works fine, I just can't tether... Then I get on a message on the phone that I've hit a 5GB tethering cap.
I call them up saying I'm at a conference and I really need more tethering data, and I'm happy to pay any amount to make that happen. The only thing they can do is to downgrade me to a non unlimited plan, which gives me 7GB of tethering data (which as an aside I run out of a few days later and have to limp along with no tethering after).
The point is that they seemed to already be addressing tethering users, so I wonder how they had some users able to have unlimited tethering to begin with...
I do think some cap on tethering is reasonable, though 5GB is too low and there should be some way to pay to extend just tethering ability if that is needed. At the time I frankly would have paid $100 for another 5GB, if that helps you have an incentive T-Mobile...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You should read the official press release, on the t-mobile site he calls them THIEVES, he says they're STEALING.
Yeh really.
http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/stopping-network-abusers.htm
" who have actually been stealing data from T-Mobile"...."We are going after every thief, "
2TB is a fucking lie, there's no way you'd get the theoretical bandwidth every second for a month. What he's doing is fucking lying like a scammer to cover his scam. Go on the offensive and attack your own customers in the most insulting way.
The number of months when I exceed 30gb is probably greater than those under. Though I don't do much tethering, since my family all have T-Mo and the rest of them have the "unlimited, with first ~2 gigs at LTE speed" option. I have full unlimited and have yet to notice any throttling.
Even that one month on vacation where I *did* tether since the kids wanted to get online with their new Christmas present laptops at our no-local-internet cabin and both wanted to do full Windows updates. I think I hit 9 gigs of tether and I only have a 5 gig tether option.
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
The corner ice cream shop doesn't set a limit on how many ice cream cones you can buy from them. And you like ice cream. Does that mean that you should sit in front of their shop and eat ice cream all day?
If you live in an east-coast city then they probably don't set a limit on how much water you can use (purchase) from them. And you like to shower a lot. Does that mean you should stand in the show all day? How about run the shower while you're not even in it?
People who think they should suck (steal) movies and software all day and then criticize the terms of their carrier are -- wait for it -- STUPID IDIOTS.
The physical limits of the spectrum, their actual need to consume the data, etc should be the limiting factors. When I hear the drivel you folks spout about "Whaaaa, they said 'unlimited' and now they're limiting me. Whaaa whaa, whaa. You damn cry babies. Go take a walk, get a job, and stop exploiting the hell out of your service provider. Get a life.
Better yet, get the hell off T-Mobile and onto Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T. We who don't exploit T-Mobiles service want you out.
Bullshit.
If you sell Unlimited data, then you sold unlimited data. End of story. Don't like people using it? Don't sell it. Sell "Practically Unlimited" or "Virtually Unlimited" but don't sell something then complain that people are using what you offered them. I'm fine with calling it unlimited if you mean that your system doesn't limit how much someone can use and the limits are a result of the physical limitations of the network and devices, but "unlimited until we decide we don't want you to use it" is a whole different thing.
The only question in my mind is were their customers prohibited from tethering their phones by their agreements. My daughter could jailbreak her phone and do free tethering, but instead she pays a monthly fee for the right to use it legally, in agreement with the MetroPCS rules. MetroPCS was bought by T-Mobile in 2012 so it will be interesting to see if the fallout from this has an effect on the services she uses.
> I'm not a lawyer, but there's a big difference between an ad and a contract.
> A contract requires consideration: both parties must exchange something real for the contract to be valid.
> But an ad has no consideration (beyond wasting your time, etc.)... it's a 1-way offer.
The classic test for a contract is that a contract requires:
An offer
An acceptance
Consideration (deliver, pay or exchange, etc)*
You said "an ad has no consideration (beyond wasting your time, etc.)... it's a 1-way offer". Right, the ad is the offer.
When you walk into the store, point to the sign, and say "I'll take that plan", that's the acceptance.
When you pay the bill, that's exchange of consideration.
Offer, acceptance, exchange of consideration. The ad is the "offer" part of the contract. If you accept the offer that's in the ad and you pay, without anything else happening, that's a contract.
Of course something else normally does happen before you pay (consideration). The provider normally whips out the FULL offer, the 12-page "contract" document. THAT is in effect a second offer, which you accept by signing and exchange consideration by paying. If the provider failed to present you with the 12-page contract offer, the ad would be only written part of the contract.
* Consideration has partly gone out the window as courts have ruled that SAYING you'll pay or deliver counts. Well the ad SAYS they'll deliver unlimited data. Part of accepting is saying "okay, I'll pay $35 for unlimited data", so there ya go. You're left with offer and acceptance, with no real exchange of actual consideration required.
The corner ice cream shop doesn't set a limit on how many ice cream cones you can buy from them. And you like ice cream. Does that mean that you should sit in front of their shop and eat ice cream all day?
If you live in an east-coast city then they probably don't set a limit on how much water you can use (purchase) from them. And you like to shower a lot. Does that mean you should stand in the show all day? How about run the shower while you're not even in it?
The physical limits of the spectrum, their actual need to consume the data, etc should be the limiting factors. When I hear the drivel you folks spout about "they said 'unlimited' and now they're limiting me. I'm paying a higher price for my services because you're wasting bandwidth. I'm sick and tired of subsidizing you.
You people who suck data all day (stealing movies and software, or playing video games) and then criticize the terms of their carrier -- you are a minority. When normal people hear you complain, we think to ourselves "What a jerk". Cry babies. Go take a walk, get a job, and stop exploiting the hell out of your service provider.
Better yet, get the hell off T-Mobile and onto Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T. We who don't exploit T-Mobiles service want you out.
That presumes service exists with meaningfully different terms.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The corner ice cream shop doesn't set a limit on how many ice cream cones you can buy from them. And you like ice cream. Does that mean that you should sit in front of their shop and eat ice cream all day?
If you live in an east-coast city then they probably don't set a limit on how much water you can use (purchase) from them. And you like to shower a lot. Does that mean you should stand in the show all day? How about run the shower while you're not even in it?
It's called "exploitation". Did you really think there is no limit. Really? C'mon, really!? Wow.
The physical limits of the spectrum, their actual need to consume the data, etc should be the limiting factors. When I hear the drivel you folks spout about "they said 'unlimited' and now they're limiting me. Here's news for you -- I'm paying a higher price for my services because you're wasting bandwidth. I'm sick and tired of subsidizing you.
You people who suck data all day (stealing movies and software, or playing video games) and then criticize the terms of their carrier -- you are a minority. When normal people hear you complain, we think to ourselves "Wow, what a pitiful lack of intelligence". Cry babies. Perhaps you take up another hobby. Go take a walk, get a job, and stop ruining it for the rest of us...
Better yet, get off T-Mobile and onto Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T. We who don't exploit T-Mobiles service want you out.
Yes, the above quote isn't real, but in TFA article he is directly quoted as calling heavy users "thieves."
If I'm operating over an encrypted connection (like https) how can they determine of the endpoint is the phone or a laptop?
I would think most users would be entirely happy with "unlimited" simply meaning that any metering of their usage that may occur would not be used to either limit usage, nor to determine how much additional fees to charge them beyond whatever level of service they paid for.
Any limits that might exist on their usage would be strictly a consequence of whatever the technology is capable of based on how the network is actually being used, not only by them, but by all subscribers at the same moment that they are using the service.
Of course, if too many subscribers are trying to do too much at once, the network can potentially become unusable for all of them.... much like if too many people are calling the same phone number at the same time then it can sometimes happen that none of them may end up getting through. That doesn't mean that their individual usage isn't unlimited, however.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
someone is using their phone to feed data to a PC I'm having a hard time seeing how they use 2TB a month.
Yes. Indeed. That word "tethering" in TFS? Now you know what it means.
People with capped cable have been using their phones to get uncapped data, and perhaps going overboard for as long as they can get away with it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
who said my 30+GB/mo (not tethered) was abuse last time T-Mo said they were going to crack down on this (then didn't). It seems they've defined abuse and it is 2TB. Of tethering. Bite me.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You can even use 20 or 100 GB if you tether. But 1TB and more is really not typical *private* internet use any more.
HD movies tend to be in the 4-8 GB range if you don't cheat on quality. 200 GB is just 1 person watching HD movies. 2 TB is just 1 person torrenting everything he sees out of some strange (but seemingly common) compulsion.
If people want to serve websites or torrents, they should not do it on their phone.
A data plan's a data plan. It's not for you to say what the data is for.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I thought T-mobile already throttled data on their unlimited plans once you downloaded a certain amount. Are the 2TB-ers are being throttled? If not, why not. If so, T-mobile should just add another tier of throttling above the one they already have.
You realize that these are people are sold unlimited data for their phone itself, with metered tethering. The complaint is that they're bypassing the tethering limit, not that they're using unlimited data for the phone itself. Nowhere did T-Mobile ever sell them unlimited tethered data.
From the open letter itself:
http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/i...
Here’s what’s happening: when customers buy our unlimited 4G LTE plan for their smartphones we include a fixed amount of LTE to be used for tethering (using the “Smartphone Mobile HotSpot” feature), at no extra cost, for the occasions when broadband may not be convenient or available. If customers hit that high-speed tethering limit, those tethering speeds slow down. If a customer needs more LTE tethering, they can add-on more. Simple.
However, these violators are going out of their way with all kinds of workarounds to steal more LTE tethered data.
Since the customer was never sold unlimited tethered data, I don't see what the problem is? It's like going to an all you can eat restaurant and complaining that you can't take your leftovers home.
-=Lothsahn=-
Yes, it was a real quote:
http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/i...
"I won't let a few thieves ruin things for anyone else."
And rightfully so. These people were NEVER SOLD unlimited tethering data. They WERE sold unlimited data for their phones, but not for tethering. They're bypassing tethering limits to get more data for themselves, which reduces the network for everyone else. It's not even victimless.
Here’s what’s happening: when customers buy our unlimited 4G LTE plan for their smartphones we include a fixed amount of LTE to be used for tethering (using the “Smartphone Mobile HotSpot” feature), at no extra cost, for the occasions when broadband may not be convenient or available. If customers hit that high-speed tethering limit, those tethering speeds slow down. If a customer needs more LTE tethering, they can add-on more. Simple.
However, these violators are going out of their way with all kinds of workarounds to steal more LTE tethered data.
Like I said in an earlier post: Since the customer was never sold unlimited tethered data, I don't see what the problem is? It's like going to an all you can eat restaurant and complaining that you can't take your leftovers home.
-=Lothsahn=-
Then dont offer 'unlimited' and certainly dont take the money if you dont mean to provide it.
Reading his blog, with that ridiculous dyed haircut screams Grade-A douche. I'm ashamed my girlfriend uses their service. Well, when she actually can get coverage at least.
Last week I received this interesting message from my dutch KPN provider: We are INCREASING your monthly allowance to 10 GB of mobile data. Yes. Ten gigs!
I don't understand why tethering is part of the conversation. If a customer consumes 2TB of data a month, does it matter if they were tethering? They could be streaming video all day on their device. It shouldn't matter how the data is used, only how much of it is used. I'm certain it doesn't affect T-Mobile network on the type of data being transmitted.
I believe T-Mobile is using the word tethering to mask the fact that the plans are not really "unlimited". The plan is only unlimited with certain restrictions, which will could be changed as T-Mobile sees fit.
That is shitty customer service too though. The network should be available when you want to use it. Its like cable modems were in some neighbor hoods in the early days. If you tried to use one between 6-8pm in some places you might as well have been on dial up. Useless slow. That's been mostly fixed now days with smaller shared segments, faster signalling, and more bandwidth dedicated to data. That is less of an option on last mile and wireless.
I should be able to depend on being able to drive around down town and get enough data throughput to facilitate using my phones navigational functions. The right/fair/just thing to since spectrum is a finite resource is a low fixed cost to cover the overhead of having an account, and then a low rate per unit. Make it a penny or two per megabyte and let users manage their own usage.
The current situation with overages is what sucks. Go a handful of megs over and get pushed into the next pricing tier. That's BS. That makes you have to monitor exactly where you are constantly instead of just making the decision "am I willing to pay a couple dollars to stream this moving here and now." Overages and caps make you afraid to use all that you have already paid for fear of crossing some invisible line.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Right, because tethering isn't data, isn't some sort of strange non-data.
Doesn't matter what they mean, but they are talking about their own customers(who might migrate), because I can't imagine, that someone is using T-mobile unlimited data plan without subscribing to it...
What you're describing for "unlimited" is what would be termed in a data center "unmetered". If I buy a 100 Mbit unmetered pipe, I can do exactly as you say, max out the 100 Mbit pipe 24x7 as I please.
What customers really want, most likely, is something like a "burstable" connection with reasonable limits. Let's say I buy a 100 Mbit "burstable" connection with a 10 Mbit commit. That means I can use up to 100 Mbits at any moment, but if the average is over 10 Mbit I pay more. (It's actually not average, it's 95th percentile, but we'll call it "average" for this conversation)
So there are limits! Fine. I'd happily go for an agreement that
1) states an average data rate,
2) Allows me to burst up to 4x or 5x that rate,
3) Throttles later in the month to maintain the average data rate or less.
4) As technology advances so that bits are cheaper/faster to send my average data rate climbs, or monthly price drops
I think the problem isn't with 1, 2, or 3, but with #4 It's much cheaper to send a GB of data now than it was 3-5 years ago. Why hasn't my usage cap gone up, or my monthly price dropped? Until that question is answered, all we're dealing with are lies and spin.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
These people were NEVER SOLD unlimited tethering data. They WERE sold unlimited data for their phones, but not for tethering.
It's still the phone that uses the data. The tethering limitations are just a clever marketing trick so that you Americans are fooled into paying extra for getting nothing more, even though you already pay extremely high prices.
For comparison, see Finnish (mobile) broadband prices. All those are unlimited, have good coverage and can be used for tethering. This in a relatively sparsely populated country and without any special subsidies that I know of.
1TB of legally owned movies isn't that much - if you have it in Blu-Ray rips that's well under 100 movies (each one is around 40GB average).
If they were more standard DVD-sized digital HD quality downloads, then we're only seeing 200 odd movies (4-6 GB each). A movie enthusiast having 200 movies isn't unusual.
That phone would also need some extra cooling fins.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Tethering and unlimited data are an either/or. Either you can have unlimited data but no tethering, or you can have tethering but with data caps.
Frankly, I think the latter makes a lot more sense. Tethering is a very useful tool built into every wifi-capable Android phone by default (the carriers disable it). If you have it, it eliminates the need to get a separate cellular data plan for your laptop, tablet, etc, and you're no longer limited to using those devices only within earshot of a wifi hotspot. I show people how to tether with their phones, and they're flabbergasted when they realize the possibilities it opens up. e.g. Kids can watch a streamed movie on their tablet during a long road trip. You can navigate using a bigger tablet as your map, instead of the tiny screen on your phone).
Logically, it makes no sense to discriminate based on where the data will end up - your phone or your tablet/computer. That's like a restaurant saying you aren't allowed to share the food you buy with someone else - only you are allowed to eat it. You've paid for the food/data, why should they have any say over what you do with it? On unlimited plans, disallowing tethering is really just a roundabout way to limit bandwidth (like buffet restaurants don't allow you to share food with someone not buying the buffet). Why do that and suffer the collateral damage it causes, when you can just limit bandwidth directly with a cap?
And how could they actually see the difference - forwarded data to PC versus used in the phone? As soon as the data traffic has reached the phone it's up to the phone owner to do whatever he/she want.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I have no problem with metered usage in general.... I also have no problem with any so-called unlimited plans either, but I'm suggesting that such labelling would only be justified when any such "unlimited" plans are designed such that any metering that may occur on them is strictly for reporting purposes, and does not actually affect what services or levels of service they are entitled to receive, or how much they pay for that service.
Their services may still be limited by things such as network bandwidth or how many other people are using the service at the same time, but such limitations are physical ones that would exist for everyone anyways, even if their usage were not being metered at all. It is only when the *metering* of usage is used to impact the amount that must be paid, or the level or quality of service being offered for the fees that are being charged that the term "unlimited" cannot reasonably be construed to apply.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The modern phone is really no different from a computer. You can install torrent software on your unrooted android phone. No tethering required.
Why is this "Informative"? "Insightful" I could understand, but given that it purports to be the "full quote" from Legere but blatantly isn't, in no way is it "Informative".
I did actually like this actual quote from TFA:
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Some people are cancelling their home broadband and tethering the phone to their Wifi router.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
How can they assume they could use "unlimited" what is sold to them as "unlimited"? What cheek!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The phone makes the distinction because the phone sets up the tethered access point. Unless the user installs apps to get around this, which is what they did.
Not if the phone owner wants to abide by the contract they agreed to in their cellular plan. T-Mobile wants to have additional control on tethered data because it is easier to use more data on a computer than on a phone, typically.
Not saying it's right or wrong, but that's the reasoning for limiting tethered data, and a customer needs to go out of their way to get around the limits that they agreed to in the cell phone plan terms.
2/GB an hour? If they're going after heavy torrent users, a single movie can clock in at 15-40GB for untouched bluray, which is quite popular these days.
Supposedly, not that I'd know.
... being the first to provide unbundled plans that don't contain subsidies for a new phone, handing out root unlocks to anyone who had paid for their phone and asked for it, and handing out really high bandwidth caps (which are soft caps, you just get slower data if you hit your cap) and we want to crucify them for going after some outliers?
Guys, this is phone network data, it's a really finite resource, it's not like cable bandwidth where the torrenters can happily keep it up and nothing bad happens, these guys are literally shitting in your proverbial front yard. T-Mobile is simply calling out a couple of anti-social people on their anti-social behavior. Meanwhile, T-Mobile uncapped my data until the end of the year. Honestly, T-Mobile is doing just fine as a cell carrier right now.
The phone forwards tethered data over a different APN. Simple.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"Unlimited" usage of a 6 Mbit connection means that you can use the full 6 Mbit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Indeed. And 5GB of tethering means you can use 5GB of tethering, even if you have unlimited LTE on your phone. And that's what T-Mobile sells: Unlimited LTE for your phone, 5GB of LTE tethering for devices that connect to your phone. They don't even really cut you off if you go over that; I've used ~20GB during a move when I had no other options and they didn't slow me until ~18GB. The issue here is that people are bypassing the tethering limits they accepted when they signed up for the service. Those people are thieves in the similar way to someone subscribing to basic cable and using a black box to get all the channels is a thief, but worse in that the bandwidth they're using incurs a cost for the provider that would not otherwise exist. So far, T-Mobile has been very gracious in their handling of these users. They threatened to terminate accounts over this last year but decided against it; that was a warning shot. This may not be.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That's like a restaurant saying you aren't allowed to share the food you buy with someone else - only you are allowed to eat it.
I know they're harder to find now, but I seem to recall restaurants offering soup/salad bars as either a single trip alongside an entree, or as unlimited trips, as the entree itself. If you opted for the salad bar as a side, you could share off the one plate you were allowed; if you chose unlimited, you were not allowed to share. People still shared anyway and the restaurants typically looked the other way, so long as it was just a couple items here and there (after all, tasting might lead to additional sales in the future) and not one person ordering the unlimited salad bar and feeding a table of 4 with it.
So yes, that's exactly what it's like, and that's exactly what places like Eat'n Park have been doing since the 70's.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What about users that actually stream a metric butt-ton of movies AND download torrents (and back that data up to a PC)? They're not tethering, but I be they'll still get cut off.
"This in a relatively sparsely populated country" That is the key right there. Populated enough to justify the cost of towers yet sparse enough that the towers won't be overburdened. As for special subsidies... Do the providers own or lease the land the towers sit on? Does the government? Does the government help out with tower siting and such or are the providers completely on their own?
The 2TB mark is very hard to believe, since it requires an minimum sustained throughput of 834.5 KB/s for an average month of 30.5 days, to the device itself.
I sure would like to know what kind of device T-Mobile found that was delivering that absurd throughput. That sounds like a testament to the quality of the phone since it's taking unrealistic loads.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I've found that there is usually a 3 month period between when T-Mobile releases a feature or plan and when the reps know anything meaningful about it. Consistently, I add features as they are released and have issues for 3 months thereafter, at which point everything is magically fixed, credits issues, a month of service comped, and life goes on.
It's gotten to the point where I'll add the feature and just expect to call them when the next 3 bills come out. I don't bother following up, I just make sure I've contacted them and it's documented; then, like clockwork, on the 3rd monthly call, everything is resolved, I'm credited for any overpayment or missed service, and given a credit for the next month's service as well. Like. Fucking. Clockwork.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Except the contract did say that "data is not data" because it differentiated between data destined to stay on the phone and data just passing through the phone to another device. Data may just be data for some purposes, but for the purpose of being in compliance with a signed T-Mobile contract, it appears that it is not.
"why should they have any say over what you do with it?" Because they are responsible for maintaining a network that services more than just one person and they have a general idea what individuals can do with smartphones so they design and sell data plans based on that assumption. They have a say because they own the infrastructure that they are leasing (in general terms) to their customers.
Why should a landlord have any say about what you do in your apartment or how many of your friends, family and acquaintances you have living with you, as long as you pay the rent? Maybe because all your neighbors have expectations about traffic (foot or otherwise) and noise and the landlord has expectations about water usage and such and it is easier to set a reasonable expectation of usage based on a number of occupants than to write contracts differently.
Bottom line is that if you wanted unlimited tethering data, then T-Mobile was not the provider to go with.
That requires a lot of variables to be right (device condition, throughput, network conditions, geography, etc.) that do not always present themselves.
Without knowing the answers to those variables, Legere is lying about the 2TB figure.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So data is not simply data, and magically transformed just for going on the wrong interface? Sounds like that could get some carrier in hot water.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I'm glad I read this. I'll never give t-mobile time of day now. It's not a unlimited plan. It's a restricted plan. And that is exactly what it should be called. Anything else is deceptive period. That CEO acts like he is some sort of hero. What a joke!
Sure, because we still don't treat ISPs as utilities, as we should. Of course, that leads to pay-by-the-GB, but I suspect that's for the best, long term, as there's now a real number to compare.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Blame your customers when you don't want to spend the Capex to augment the network. Passing 2 TB via cellphone in a month would be impossible. Not in theory but in application very much so. The longer you are on the network the more your connection is throttled. This is common knowledge.
really high bandwidth caps (which are soft caps, you just get slower data if you hit your cap)
What's the point of throttling if it's still lets 2TB/month go through?
Throttle them to 640kbit if they really want to stop somebody.
Use their website and never have to visit a store once you get a SIM. That's what I do.
Stock Android didn't limit tethering until 5.0, if I remember correctly. In general, installing an app to tether is not a "hack", it's just an app that legitimately uses data on the phone by forwarding it elsewhere. It's not legally or technically fundamentally different from forwarding an email from your phone to your PC over WiFi.
Except they seem to have a problem with tethering specifically, not with heavy data usage. Note that you can, in fact, run a full-fledged BitTorrent client on your Android phone, for example; it's even available directly from Play Store.
A megabyte of data is a megabyte of data. Once it gets to the phone, it should be none of the operator's business where it goes from there. If that breaks their business model, it's a shitty model, and they should do something more sane, like not advertising their plans as "unlimited", or better yet, just metering traffic.
A subscriber agreement IS a contract (despite what cable/carrier companies want you to believe), and adding terms to a contract is exactly what you can do. So if T-Mobile sold you a device and provided service after those changes were made, it can be argued they implicitly agreed to the modified contract. These agreements are signed by providing the service, much like EULAs are signed by using the software
The problem is this clause is ambiguous. T-Mobile could still provide data at any speed or bandwidth they decide. After all, it didn't say unlimited bandwidth. And if data IS referring to bandwidth, then it's a physically impossible condition that T-Mobile could be held liable for making claims about.
'contract', 'unlimited', these words refer to specific well defined things. Don't let carriers define them for you.
Find somewhere on the T-Mobile site where it says unlimited without the qualifier right there. They're very clear about what they sell. This isn't a "buried in the contract" thing, it's a "before you even select an option we're going to make sure you know what the boundaries are" thing. There's no company that sells totally unlimited plans for tethered mobile devices.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
"because nothing on Earth is unlimited."
Actually, the amount of discussion on this topic is unlimited, and you're not helping...
Installing an app is not "going out of their way".
and technically, it's the APP that's using all the data. Whether or not that application passes that data through to another device (a PC) is another point altogether. I could set up the mobile app of uTorrent and have the data download to a networked share, T would be facing the same problem although it wouldn't be a "breach of contract"
Common sense says that nothing can be advertised as unlimited, because nothing on Earth is unlimited.
Stupidity has no limits :-)
Even if we treated ISPs as utilities, they could still differentiate data just like this. Utilities are allowed to differentiate between residential and commercial customers for rates, water utilities are allowed to charge different connection rates depending on whether the hookup is for indoor use or just outdoor use, etc.
Lots of ways.
From super simple (AFAIK, all that T-Mobile did in the past), sniff traffic for user agent. If a desktop browser, then tethered).
A little more advanced, check TTLs. Unless you do counter measures (trivial with iptables), they will be different for traffic from your phone vs. the tethered device-- if diff OS, you may have diff starting TTLs, but even if same OS (i.e., linux desktop tethered), you will have TTL decremented as it routes through the phone.
Even more advanced, do passive OS fingerprinting. You can tell what OS is on the other side of that NAT your phone is creating, just by watching the packets go by. Counter measures are still pretty trivial-- old farts think back to the days of a terminal only account, and what you did to make it into a fake slip connection :)
An android phone is essentially a computer in itself. You don't need to tether it to a second computer to use a lot of bandwidth. You can share its screen with a TV or a projector to stream movies, or even connect a hard-drive (using USB OTG) and download "linux distributions" via bit-torrent on it. T-mobile have no way of knowing who is tethering and who is simply using a lot of data on the phone. (Well, actually they could easily find out by deep-packet inspection, and maybe they are doing that. I bet the fine print in their contract says they are allowed to.)
T-mobile have no way of knowing who is tethering and who is simply using a lot of data on the phone.
Tethering uses a different APN than mobile data. You think they can't tell based on that? Clearly, they know when I'm tethering, since they are able to tell me how much of my 7GB tethering allotment I have remaining even when I've used well over 20GB of mobile data on top of it.
Bypassing this by switching your tethering APN won't work, because the mobile data APN doesn't NAT like the tethering APN does, but other solutions exist such as Barnacle, which implements a full NAT router on your phone. T-Mobile can, of course, note that you historically have used 7GB of tethering and (say) 100BM of mobile data then, one month, use 7.1GB of mobile data and no tethering (while testing to see that it works as intended), then suddenly much more mobile data and still no tethering. Any reasonably intelligent person will know that you're bypassing tethering restrictions when that happens.
But you're right, they can't prove beyond all doubt that you are tethering if you bypass the restrictions. Of course, when you sue (neigh arbitrate with) them, the preponderance of evidence will point to excessive tethering in violation of their terms of service and you will lose. But go ahead and try it anyway.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"These people were never sold those beers for drinking, they were sold beer for putting in the fridge, but not for drinking. I don't care that they paid for them, they shouldn't be drinking them."
Outside of the United Lawyers of America, you don't get to dictate what customers do with the stuff they buy.
Fuck tmo. Just the fact they sell phones with crippleware makes them the thieves. If I buy a highend smartphone, I expect it to do whatever the hell I ask of it. When a cellular service provider then cripples it, they should be charged with theft. As for tethering, I really couldn't care less. IMO, cellular providers don't deserve the monies they charge for data. And I will never pay for it either.
What phones do they cripple?
I bought my iPad direct from Apple. Since you pay full price with T-Mobile anyway, there's really no downside to buying the an OEM phone and using it. When I had to send back my iPad for a while I just switched the SIM to a Moto E.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Some people are cancelling their home broadband and tethering the phone to their Wifi router.
Cord cutters, we're talking about you! :(
he calls them thieves, when he deliberately mislead them...
fraud
hypocrisy
deceit
But there'd be no reason to. Industrial power is different because you're paying for infrastructure built just for you, so you pay based on peak usage, not KWh. Water hookups just for outdoor use may have non-potable water, or more commonly, you pay normally for the water but you don't pay for sewer (which costs 3x in some places).
For data, the only difference is "upstream" vs "downstream", which is quite significant. Charging based on the of the data shouldn't fly (that should be the whole point of net neutrality regs, reality aside). Backhaul is all price-per-GB anyhow as I understand it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well, if the phone is doing NAT (quite probable) looking at the TTL is not really an option... Doing some type of OS detection could be done, but then you just install a web-proxy app on the phone and it will be the phone that creates all the outgoing connections...
But why not have an unlimited plan with a rule saying that when you go over X amount of traffic you will be throttled down to only get unused bandwith in the network and when going above Y amount (like 1TB or so) your connection would be limited to 128Kbit or something like that.. This would be normal traffic prioritization..
Still unlimited in terms of that you will never have to pay more and you will always have a network connection...
If i would have a month with lots of traffic i would not really care if i would be bandwith-limited, not even down to 128Kbit. Loosing network-connectivity completely is something much worse..
ehm... If the shrimps and steak runs out it's up to the resturant to refill since they sold it as an "all you can eat".. it's not the customers fault that the resturant did not plan for someone only eating what he liked...
The resturant could have had a "All you can eat buffet" with a subnotice "Max 2 servings of steak/shrimp" and allowed the person to eat as much as he wanted of the sallad and other stuff..
But with network it's a bit different... As long as there is room in the frequency-spectrum to transfer data and room in the rest of the network actually transporting that data over the existing infrastructure would be so minimal it would be hard to calculate..
The operator could here do something that would be *mostly* invisible to users and still allow lots of traffic during hours where they have basically no traffic in the network, and that is to trottle the the high-bandwith users with prioritization of traffic only letting them use the spare-capacity in the network.. It might be very high during nights and slow as crap during days... Ie.. The more data you use the less priority your traffic will get..
The line is a perceptual one, though, not a physical one. If someone sends me a picture through an IP-based chat program, and I copy it to my computer, have I just "tethered?" What about if they do the same with a video? What if I ask them to send me the video first? What if I formalize those requests using a protocol? Where does one draw the line? It's all fundamentally just data being copied and requests being made.
So it's just a question of perception, and perception is subjective. If you're going to run a technological service, provide objective, technical definitions. Structuring a contract with subjective terms is foolish.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
What I heard during a discussion on Periscope with John was more about people using 2TB for in a semi-commercial sense (as a backup for some other kind of line) and obviously this is not OK.
That being said, using wireless for P2P/Torrents is an horrible idea anyway - it's just not that good and a lot of wireless equipment (even the good stuff) falls over when there are too many TCP connections - most of the time, this causes a kind of ping timeout and it auto-reboots but then you have a node offline for several minutes and that's never a good thing.
As for the argument about unlimited, well, there's unlimited and there's unlimited - while some might argue that this must be interpreted to mean "I can saturate my line at 100% throughput for 720 hours per month", that's just not practical for either the ISP or for the end user (on a 100mb connection that's ~30TB) since bandwidth is contended (unless you're one of the lucky few whose ISP doesn't contend bandwidth).
In my view, having in place a soft-cap isn't entirely unreasonable -- so long as the cap itself is reasonable and not something stupidly low (and doesn't result in overage fees or slowdowns, but results in some kind of usage-watch so that ISP and subscriber can rectify the situation by changing the plan or whatever, like the FUPs I've seen on ISPs in places like Singapore and Japan).
On broadband connections (as defined by the FCC), 10-20GB per megabit sold seems like a figure that would work for the vast majority of people, equating to between 250 & 500 GB at the lowest end and 1000-2000GB on a 100mb connection - the local cableco where I'm based (when I'm in the US) has plans with FUPs up to 3TB (at a speed of 150mbit/s). As for the rest of the country still on sub-Broadband Internet, maybe 50GB per megabit sold would be workable.
How does this relate to T-Mobile and it's kicking off the heaviest users? Well, again, there's unlimited and there's unlimited. It all comes down to what I would call "reasonable use" - 2TB is probably not reasonable use; whereas 50GB arguably is. Maybe even 100GB. And if you're using more than this on your mobile/tethering, you should probably have a wired connection instead, anyway (in my opinion).
I will grant that there are obviously areas where people simply can't get a workable wired connection so as a compromise, T-Mobile might want to consider having some kind of plan at a reasonable price for users who just can't get anything other than mobile.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
Except as it has already been pointed out, it was not unlimited *tethered* data. That was strictly defined as being 5GB or so.
So while it might piss off the 3,000 subscribers they're looking to kick off the network (out of what, 59 million or so?), it's justified in this particular instance.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)