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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.
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.
Blaming their customers for their own mistake and calling them "thieves" is pretty low.
You realize that wasn't actually a real quote, right?
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.'"
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=-