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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."
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!"
Blaming their customers for their own mistake and calling them "thieves" is pretty low.
You realize that wasn't actually a real quote, right?
The BBB is a rubber-stamp. All you need to do to display the BBB logo in your ads or claim you are "BBB Approved" is to send them a check.
A little while ago I filed a complaint about a car dealership I was having trouble with. They "investigated" and found the dealer not at fault. Which would be fine, except I looked up the history on those kind of complaints - and there wasn't even one case in which they found for the customer. It's kind of like the FBI investigating itself for shooting incidents - in all cases they found themselves not at fault.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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.
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.
Like most things in life, the situation is just a little more complicated than that. Personally, I know about the 7GB cap, and I've never hit it - I use tethering basically the way T-Mobile intended - a provisional internet connection when in a place where I need internet access on my laptop, because my phone doesn't cut it.
One thing worth noting about the difference between 'how laptops use internet' and 'how phones use internet' is that computers will open up TCP connections like they're going out of style, whereas mobile devices are generally optimized to avoid that. The switching gear on the carrier side assumes the latter, not the former. It may not necessarily tax spectrum, but it will tax the networking gear, especially if you're torrenting. "But they should have better infrastructure!" In a perfect world, sure. In the world we presently live in, I do think it's unreasonable to expect them to invest millions of dollars in their infrastructure to address a use case that 1.) affects a very small minority of their users, and 2.) involves violations of their ToS.
However, "installing special apps to circumvent enforcement" is based on a number of assumptions, that may not be correct. I root my phone - XPrivacy is a must for me, as is 'getting rid of Google and Samsung crap, and CarrierIQ'. Sometimes, I'll install a custom ROM. AOSP-based ROMs can't do Wi-Fi calling because of the kernel; it's a pretty good assumption that carrier-customized kernels are required in order to have the T-Mobile tethering meter running. Even the ones which are based on the carrier kernel tend to have things like CarrierIQ and Knox removed; many have the data cap evasion code built in. Furthermore, T-Mobile's default configuration is not very VPN friendly; one must reconfigure their APNs in order to get many forms of VPN functioning.
The question that concerns me is whether it is "well-above-average data usage while tethering" that will cause the wrath of Legere, or simply "the absence of data cap enforcement software". If it is truly the latter, then that is concerning. T-Mobile has traditionally been the most mod-friendly carrier. If they're going to change that tune, they will likely disincentivize remaining a customer to the XDA community...and if that comes to pass, it will be interesting to see how the numbers land.
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=-