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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."
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.
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!"
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Blaming their customers for their own mistake and calling them "thieves" is pretty low.
You realize that wasn't actually a real quote, right?
They state that they don't restrict it for mobile data usage. The thing is, you'd have a hard time hitting that sort of usage with a phone alone. Don't like the ToS, don't sign up for the service.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
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.
California is a big place. I get LTE in the all the major cities and most of the smaller ones along the I-5 corridor. You won't get it in the boonies, though; LTE is fast but not good for wide-area coverage.
The problem is, when you don't get LTE, you also mostly don't get HSDPA. Because T-Mobile's coverage is so shit, you're lucky if you can get EDGE. Which, by the way, doesn't work either. You cannot actually load a webpage over it. Ask me how I know.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes it is OK.
Carriers carry data. They shouldn't even know if the data is coming from the phone itself or via tethering. Doing so is a violation of net neutrality, and is a bad thing. I'm glad some people go around that arbitrary discrimination of packets.
> 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.
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'
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=-
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.
"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.
The unlimited LTE plan includes 5GB of tethering. So no, customers are not prohibited from tethering, but they're also not paying for unlimited tethering and the tethering limits are plainly displayed in marketing materials.
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.
And they don't. The sell unlimited mobile (e.g. on your device) data, not unlimited tethering. The 2TB users are tethering past the 7GB limit they paid for.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.