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T-Mobile is Making Its 'Unlimited' Data Plan Even More Confusing (theverge.com)
When T-Mobile announced "One" plan, little did the company know that people wouldn't like seeing their "unlimited" data plan offer video streaming max out at 480p resolution. The company is making some tweaks to that plan, only to make things more confusing to people. It will now begin selling "HD day passes" for $3 per day, allowing customers to stream in 1080p for 24 hours. The Verge reports: That's simple enough, but here's where it gets really weird: T-Mobile is also offering a plan called T-Mobile One Plus, which, among other benefits, offers unlimited HD day passes. So by subscribing to the plan, you can stream 1080p video all you want every single day -- but only if you go and activate the HD day pass again every single day. Presumably, T-Mobile is hoping you'll forget to activate those passes, or else it would have just lifted the 480p quality limit without this bizarre constraint. Making this even more confusing, T-Mobile originally announced plans to offer an "HD add-on" for the One plan that offered unlimited HD streaming without constraints. That's no longer going to be an option, however, so if you want HD video streaming, you're stuck re-enabling it every day. A T-Mobile rep framed the change as "giving customers more" for the same price, which is true (both cost $25 extra per month), but the new plan also involves the strange new reactivation hurdle.
T-Mobile sucks!
So now I will have to get T-Mobile One Plus on my OnePlus One on T-Mobile? (just kidding, I have Ting who uses T-Mobile's network)
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
How can T-Mobile differentiate between these,
as far as I know the connection to youtube is cryptographically secured.
So one could be guessing by the data rate and the duration, but with browsers using buffering that would be complicated.
However I would tunnel the traffic through my trusty unlimited broadband at home or my root server, using ssh.
So T-Mobile ain't see nothing yet !?
**1 -- Not applicable to all plans. Void where prohibited. See merchant for more details. Days that end in Y are excluded. Mobile data restrictions apply. The party of the first part is not beholden to the party of the second part, but is otherwise beholden themselves to the third. Prior approval is required for data entitlement. Data packets larger than 100bytes subject to fee.
I usually have this thought whenever I think about my cell phone plan, but man, I'm really glad I don't have T-Mobile!
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"We believe carrier pigeons could vastly boost the speed and reliability of our network." -- T-Moblie
... I doubt any of the cell phone leading providers would escape long prison sentences. If I didn't have to have a cell phone for employment, I wouldn't own one.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Your differentiation from larger, better coverage area providers is slimming every day. I can get what I need from Verizon for $5 more a month and I will get better service in a wider coverage area...
How long until someone writes a $0.99 app that automatically enables HD on a daily basis.
What is Legere smoking now?
But I sure wouldn't switch to T-Mobile now if I wasn't. Used to be, mediocre coverage, great, affordable plans. Now it's Binge-on, T-Mobile Tuesdays, goofy plans...you can only paper over your poor coverage with gimmicks for so long before you have to build your network out. If they ever cancel my Grandfathered plan, it's MVNO all the way for me.
It's $50 ($55 with tax).
I get unlimited music and 1 gig of data.
Recently right as the month ends I'm hitting 900mb (and that's with youtube videos).
They tried to upsell me to the post paid plan.
It was $70 ($77 with tax). And otherwise the same plan.
I looked at the salesperson and explained my plan again.
She went, "oh.. right" and stopped.
Do you have a great plan to recommend? I'd love to hear it. Every month, I have the option of changing plans or even services. I love it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The daypass thing is mildly more confusing, but I suspect part of the logic is to encourage use of the Binge-On technology, without which towers are likely to get clogged pretty quickly. I also suspect that the soft limit of 27G a month will be torn through pretty quickly by anyone making heavy use of HD video. Go over the 27G and you're "deprioritized" - you'll get full service during quiet times, but you'll be throttled when everyone else is trying to use the network (which is fair, but you probably don't want it to happen to you!)
The big improvement is that Tethering is now an acceptable half-megabit/s, rather than 2G speeds. That makes "Unlimited tethering" actually useful again.
The big question for me is how to encourage video streaming companies to sign up to Binge-On if there's no incentive. In theory, they can just transmit 1080p over HTTPS (protocols like DASH are HTTPS friendly) and T-Mobile will never know.
With the original implementation, the advantage was that your viewers could watch your services without worrying about it coming out of their data. But if data is unlimited...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The biggest part of this news for me is the new T-Mobile One Plus plan which gives you unlimited tethering for $95. I have the original unlimited plan which has 7 gigs of tethering for $80. This may be enough for me to switch plans. The only thing I'm not sure about is the it says the tethering is "non-prioritized" LTE. Was tethering always non-prioritized or should I be expecting slower speeds?
This whole thing is playing havoc with its (relative) coolness reputation.
My basic take it is this. No one especially a data carrier should have any right to inspect packets I PAY to transmit any more then they have the right to randomly search my car without legal cause and search warrant. It should and needs to be ILLEGAL for any data provided to in anyway inspect or log traffic contents or destinations unless it is for purposes of debugging a problem. If they want to meter the amount of data fine, make it clear in the contract, they have no more business knowing what I send and receive then the electric company who powers the routers. Sorry that doesn't allow carries to milk their current networks for every last penny they can stick it to people for , but customers have a right to privacy that includes not having a corporate hack decide which data I'm worthy to receive and what rates, we agree, I pay, end of story. All this traffic inspection is violation of basic privacy and as a society and as consumers we should vehemently oppose it. Perhaps apple and Google should start enabling router based TOR by default on their phones. Sad that it has to come to that, because tor is a bandwidth hog but if carriers aren't going to treat people right that is what everyone should start doing.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Is probably much more in the realm of "it's going to take us x time to code this thing to check for the pass subscription with each attempt and it will bog down the network y amount to make that check every time the user tries to load a video but it will only z time to stick the check in the calls which already talk to the server specifically to handle the passes" than it is "some nefarious marketing and sales shit which doesn't make any sense and will only piss people off."
And so far intend to stay that way.
I don't get throttled. Ever.
I don't get rate limited. I get HD video all I want, so far.
I've only gone over 13GB/month once, but no impacts.
I need to add a line soon, but it won't be these. I'm not ready to sacrifice functionality (video quality) for cost, at least not this formula.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Write an angry letter / email / facebook / tweeet and vent your outrage at your congresscritter. Tell them T-Mobile is a sneaky sneak being a sneak!
Oh snap, they're bought and paid for! They won't listen. They don't give a rat's ass.
Jump ship. Maybe if enough people dump T-Mobile, they'll get the message.
Oh snap, you're just a grain of sand in a big beach!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I think what they are saying is they are going to screw with your latency and data rate such that an HD movie will stutter and an SD will play.
Basically, they are going to give you unlimited bandwidth in the same sense that a station wagon full of dvds is unlimited bandwidth. Yes there's a very very long latency but when the wagon arrives the delta function is so large that if occupies the entire spectrum. Voila unlimited data with unlimited bandwidth, very high latentcy
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
i mean it there prices keep going up for the same data packets.
how are any of these data plans even legal?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/net...
Dear Valued T-Mobile Customer,
Please pay for this service, but don't use it. Seriously, our infrastructure can't support it and we simply can't afford to upgrade. You have no idea of the pressure we're under. I mean we have shareholders to think about, and a stock price to manipulate. Frankly, your data service is the least of our concerns. So, enjoy your unlimited* data, but just... don't use it. Please. Pretend it's not there...
...but... y'know... be cool. Keep paying for it. Shareholders, etc. You know how it is.
Thanks, buddy.
I once burned about £50 because, while out in the field and unable to get a wifi connection, I had to activate an add-on data bundle on the T-Mobile SIM in my laptop because I'd hit the PAYG data cap. Unbeknownst to me, once you activate that bundle it *automatically* renews until you run out of money.
I only found out several months later when I tried to use the SIM internet normally and found all the credit had gone...
It's funny these packs are so easy to auto-renew when it costs you money, yet are so difficult to auto-renew when it does not...