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T-Mobile Fined $48 Million By FCC For Mischaracterizing 'Unlimited' Plan and Throttling Users' Data (bloomberg.com)
T-Mobile will have to pay $48 million in fines after reaching a settlement with the FCC over the way it promoted its unlimited data plans. T-Mobile's unlimited data plans don't charge you for going over a certain data limit, but the carrier can slow down connection speeds after you reach a certain threshold. From a Bloomberg report: The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday announced the settlement, including a $7.5 million fine and $35.5 million worth of discounted gear or data for customers of third-largest U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile and its MetroPCS unit. An investigation found that company policy allows T-Mobile to decrease data speeds when customers on plans sold as unlimited exceed a monthly data threshold, the FCC said in a news release. The agency heard from hundreds of "unhappy" customers who complained of slow speeds and said they weren't receiving what they were sold, according to the news release.
AT&T does this, too. Are they gonna get slapped down for this, too?
Do something real, like making them refile for a new corporate charter.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So I guess it would be impossible for any company to offer unlimited anything since there will always be some sort of limit.
All they will do is pass it along to the customer.. Nothing to see here.
This kind of makes no sense. You'd have to be living in a cave to not know that they throttle your service after a certain amount. I'd much prefer that than being cut off or forced to pay extra like Comcast is/will be doing for "unlimited service". *That is as long as the throttle was sufficient to use the Internet*. Some ISPs (not all) think a couple mbps is still good enough for an entire family. Fining Comcast for 2.3 million while they were actually stealing money from customers for services they did not ask for.. what the hell? This will just go towards eliminating unlimited tiers.
I feel like there's something more to this story.
T-Mobile's "unlimited" plans are what I use, and they've always been pretty straightforward about what that means... They don't hit you with a hard-stop limit, but after a particular chunk of full-speed data, they cut you back to "3G speed". All of their marketing material that's I've paid attention to has stated that plainly (to an engineer), in print that wasn't particularly small.
I can't say I've ever found the advertisements to be particularly misleading (or the policy to be particularly limiting), but I'm not as touchy as some consumers are, I guess.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I've been a T-mobile customer for several years, and I thought it was pretty obvious that they'd throttle the data when you reached your plan's threshold. Did they, at some point, market the plans as "unlimited data at 4G speeds"? Or are certain customers being deliberately obtuse?
Beats the heck out of getting cut off completely, or worse - getting charged a zillion bucks for data overages.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Their data policy is right there in their name: T-Mobile, ie Throttling-Mobile.
Being paranoid, I'd venture that AT&T and/or Verizon pulled some weight to have them nag T-Mobile. Now that LTE is prolific/mature on all four networks, their real advantage over T-Mobile and Sprint is dying away.
T-Mobile made it pretty clear, this is what they did when signing up. I think it's a better solution than exorbitant fees, when you're unaware you crossed a threshold.
Over the last year or two, T-Mobile has redefined and even re-labeled what their unlimited plan means. Regardless, they have always been absolutely forthcoming about detail changes. Although I can see where that might get confusing, especially for customers who renew into a new plan without realizing it. So I guess it must be a slow day at the FCC.
On a personal anecdote, I very recently ditched my business plan for AT&T after a T-Mobile business rep tried to sell off my unused lines for a full year cash up front. Same rep then managed to deactivate my primary phone. I filed a complaint and he still works there.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
It's constantly available and there are no limits on when you can use it. In one very clear use of the word unlimited, the plan is unlimited.
I thought they were very clear about the throttling. This is ignorant people being upset because they aren't smart enough to understand their plan.
That's barely a slap on the wrist for Big Magenta. More of a gentle tickle, really.
Using free data sources like Yahoo Finance, you can easily see that TMUS collected $33.9 billion in revenue over the last four quarters. $1.1 billion trickled down to become bottom-line profit. This $48 million fine is a rounding error compared to the company's sales and just 4.4% of its trailing profits.
Put another way, the company has 67 million total subscribers. If T-Mobile paid back the entire fine directly to its customers, it'd be a grand total of 72 cents each. Please sir, may I have another?
#o#
O Moo.
The difference depends on whether you take the words "limited" or "unlimited" to be adjectives describing a plan, or transitive verbs that operate on a plan.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Unless you hit this limit.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A speed limit is infact a limit, so the FCC is correct - the plan is not unlimited.
So you're demanding unlimited speed? Good luck with that.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, do these sound like the actions of a man who has had all he can eat?
It's sad, we have a whole generation who've never known that the Simpsons used to be funny.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Let's get some truth in advertising please? Anything less than full bandwidth 24x7 should not be called "unlimited".
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
At $48 million they're not being slapped down. that's not even a slap on the wrist. It's more like shaking your head from across the room, then following up with a quick wink and tiny nod.
It seems to me that T-Mobile US, unlike its competitors, was actually completely transparent about their plans and policies. Am I missing something? They specifically offered different data amounts labeled as "high speed data", with the unlimited data always being at a lower speed. I don't see the problem here, or why they should be fined. Now, if they had a secret cap that they didn't tell their customers about up-front, or only in the fine print, like other carriers, that would be serious. This just makes no sense to me.
I really think T-Mobile has the right idea with their offering, I just wish they offered a way to toggle whether high-speed was on or off. High-speed data is of little use to me on a phone. I know it is to other people, and that's great, they can pay for that. All I want is the ability to get directions, send/receive IMs and email, and ideally enough to do VoIP or low-quality video chat. T-Mobile already offers high-speed streaming of music and video from most major sites that don't count against your high speed data limit.
I know I sound like a total corporate shill here, and that's not my intention. I just hope that the FCC is targeting the worst offences, and this doesn't seem to be one of them.
... and the court sides with the ignorant. It's always been quite clear to me, and it's not just T-Mobile.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Does a really unlimited service actually exist? In US market? A side question - do US authorities punish anybody else these days than companies coming from German speaking countries?
It depends on whether you take "unlimited" to mean that it has no limits, or whether you take it to mean only that no limits have been imposed by the provider. In a notion of a "limited" plan, the provider decides what those limits are, and either directly limits usage to within those limits, or else charges the subscriber a larger fee for exceeding them. Note, in this case, it is not physical infrastructure that is imposing any limit, but rather, it is a particular policy that is being used by the service provider. "Unlimited" therefore, should reasonably mean only that no such policies are utilized by the provider, and that the provider is not taking any action to actually "limit" the subscirber's usage beyond what provider's infrastructure could have otherwise provided for an arbitrary user.
The difference depends on whether you take the words "limited" or "unlimited" to be adjectives describing a plan, or transitive verbs that operate on a plan.
This is "precedent" in the future. Now the definition will be clearly defined or fine print enlarged/bolded. Actually, they probably won't do any of that, but hey. Precedent! I expect all of us will get mailings (non T-Mobile customers) about the specifics of our data plans just to cover ass.
A speed limit is infact a limit, so the FCC is correct - the plan is not unlimited.
So you're demanding unlimited speed? Good luck with that.
No just the maximum speed allowed by the technology. Is it really that hard to understand or are you being purposefully ignorant?
A speed limit is infact a limit, so the FCC is correct - the plan is not unlimited.
So you're demanding unlimited speed? Good luck with that.
This being Slashdot, I think it's high time we had a car analogy!
Imagine I built a race track for cars. I advertise nationally that my track is "unlimited" - anyone can go as fast as they can manage to achieve in their car for as long as they want on my race track as long as they pay their entry fee. It's one of the biggest advertised draws for my track. Then, when customers show up with their car and have already paid their fee, I install a governor in their car that will cap their car's top speed if they've been going really fast for longer than I'm uncomfortable with. After all, at speeds that fast they're tearing up my track and hogging its usage, and that's not fair to everyone else who wants to use the track.
The issue isn't that people couldn't achieve the speed of light on my track. The issue isn't even that I wanted to solve the problem of overuse of my track by a few people. The issue is that I told everyone that my track was something that it isn't and I never bothered to qualify my statement until my service had already been sold.
If this is a subsidiary of t-mobile in Germany then no ,they cannot or rather they can but then they would be violating the law and possibly get punished by German authorities. Siemens had that problem already. Not all industries are so loved by German government as the banks and car makers.
Well from my experience with T-Mobile, my unlimited plan is unaltered for 4g. I hit around 90gb transfer in 1 month with no slowdown. Then again, I'm on some wonky legacy plan, so that is probably why.
T-Mobile: "48 million? Pretty sure I've got that much on me right now. Once sec... Yep. Hundreds good?" (counts bundles of bills) "I was worried there for a minute 'cause I don't have my checkbook with me and I was expecting, you know, a real fine."
Well, in this case the deprioritization (read: not throttling) isn't a limit imposed by the provider, it's a method of minimizing the number of people affected by the physical limits of the network by deciding who bears the brunt of that impact.
And the end result is less network congestion and better speeds for everyone on the network. Yes, that includes the heavy users who get deprioritized, as it allows the lighter users to finish their downloads and get off the network faster.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The maximum speed allowed by a congested link (this is deprioritization, which has no effect when bandwidth is available; it's not throttling, which would take effect even if you were the only user) approaches zero as more users hop on at the same priority level, for every user.
Deprioritizing the heavier users increases speeds for everyone by allowing the lighter users to finish their downloads faster and get off the network, freeing up bandwidth for the heavier users.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I'm not suggesting that it's not necessarily an essential thing for the ISP to do for the good of the largest number of people, but the choice to throttle high capacity users beyond what their network could have otherwise handled at the time based only on the amount of prior usage by those subscribers is still a choice of the provider to *limit* the activity for those people to certain levels. In that sense, throttling cannot be considered unlimited because the provider is actively choosing to limit its usage, even if they are only doing so by imposing speed limits on it, those limits are an artifact of a *policy* that the company chooses that is outside of the parameters of the service that it offers, in the same sense that any limit that the ISP would have on an expressly limited plan is likewise only an implementation of a similar policy.
It is absolutely no different than an electric company raising rates at certain times of day to discourage people from using too much electricity.
Companies are perfectly entitled to do this, of course...and I'm not saying that they shouldn't be. What I'm saying is that they shouldn't be calling something "unlimited" when they are actively choosing to limit it, even if what they are limiting is not affecting when they could use the service or how often... it is affecting how much they will be able to utilize out of the service that would not have otherwise applied to anyone else, and so in that sense, it is most definitely a limit.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It is absolutely no different than an electric company raising rates at certain times of day to discourage people from using too much electricity.
Actually, it's entirely different. If an electric company reduced the availability of power to heavy users when local load was high, well, that'd be no different. In fact, that's precisely what many electric companies are beginning to do with things like HVAC cutoff devices and it's a damned sight better than what some (including my local utility, PG&E) have been doing for years with structured rolling blackouts independent of individual usage.
To flip it around, what you describe is exactly what HughesNet does for their satellite internet service. You pay for between 5GB and 50GB of data each month, which can be utilized 24hr/day, but they make the hours of 2AM to 8AM effectively cheaper by giving you a 50GB bucket of data that is only available during those hours.
If you think T-Mobile and HughesNet are doing the same thing, you're too hopelessly far gone to be saved.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I have no issue with companies that impose limitations on usage of their services on anyone for any reason they see fit to impose them on. I have an issue with companies that call services "unlimited", when they *do* impose limitations on the usage of their services over and above whatever limits may have physically existed in the first place to support the infrastructure. Those limits are nothing but a policy decision, and I again have no dispute with companies that wish to implement such policies, but by the exact same reasoning that any so-called "limited" plan has limits imposed on it by virtue of policies decided by the company, any plan that they can fairly call "unlimited" should be entirely unencumbered by *any* such policies. If it has policies that create limits (even if they are only speed limits and not time or usage limits) on what they would otherwise call a limited plan, how can they continue to call that plan unlimited in the first place?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Right... You're missing the point entirely.
The only limit to T-mobile's unlimited 4g (not the tiered plans for which they do state limits) is their network capacity. They prioritize based on usage, but that's not a limit, it's prioritization and, in fact, it improves network performance, even for the deprioritized users, by reducing competition for a scarce resource when there's not enough to go around, allowing lighter users to finish their downloads faster and get off the network sooner.
There is no speed limit here, nor a time or usage limit.
Consider this: If they didn't have the deprioritization policy, excessive congestion on a given tower would result in a completely unusable connection for everyone. Giving a subset of users priority to allow them to get off the network sooner avoids that; it effectively increases the speed limit for everyone by more efficiently utilizing the available bandwidth, which is limited by physics.
If you've never implemented proper QoS on a congested network and seen the immediate impact it had on the traffic flow, this isn't something that is obvious to most people, so i fully understand how you might think it's a limit of sorts, but the reality is that it enables all users to effectively get their data instead of flooding the data with retransmitted packets as everyone attempts to talk over everyone else.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"flooding the network"... heh..
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If two people are paying a particular rate for a particular service, as long as they are operate within the parameters that the service allows, they should always be receiving identical (or nearly identical) levels of service at any given time. If there are parameters that can be exceeded by a given userr such that the level of service is altered for that user only, then those parameters are limits on that service, and the service cannot reasonably be called unlimited.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So you'd rather have contention prevent anyone from using the service, rather than network management that allows everyone to use it?
From your previous posts, it seems as though you think there's a speed limit or throttle placed on users exceeding 26GB when this is, in fact, not the case.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
When that network management is being used only for subscribers that have exceeded certain thresholds, then those thresholds are, in fact, limits on the levels of service offered by the plan that they paid for, and the subscribers whose packets have been deprioritized have been relegated to an alternate plan while others are unaffected. I have no problem with companies that want to do this, what I take exception to, however, is when the companies call them "unlimited" when they do, in fact, set some limit on how much someone can actually utilize such a plan before they relegate that subscriber to a a different level of service than what others who might be paying the exact same amount for the same service might enjoy at the exact same time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I am suing the city because they posted a 45 MPH speed limit on main street and I hit traffic and I couldn't do 45 MPH. Oh, and an ambulance went by they were able to get through traffic faster than me. How dare the city limit my usage of the street!
when they do, in fact, set some limit on how much someone can actually utilize
Funny, I routinely hit 50+GB and have never run into an imposed limit. The limit is that of the network itself, a physical one, minus everyone else's traffic. Implementing some form of contention control ensures that I'm consistently able to access what many people refuse to accept as a scarce resource.
It's not like wireline or fiber, where you just run more cables and everything is good; wireless bandwidth is, really and truly, a scarce resource. Network management is not limiting usage, it's enabling it. That some ISPs *cough*Comcast*cough*AT&T*cough*Time Warner*cough* implement usage limits and hard throttling and call it network management does not make it so.
The reality is that T-Mobile queues the packets of heavier users behind those of lighter users, but it does not drop or refuse those packets (not that would be a limit), and it does deliver them before connections time out (save for network issues, where they would time out regardless of priority).
I get what you're saying, though. I do. It's just logically impossible. You want everyone to be deprioritized equally when there's congestion and, well, if everyone starts out at the highest priority and they, simultaneously, all drop to the lowest priority, they're all still the same priority, there is no hierarchy, everyone's still equal, there's still contention and everyone is still trying to talk over everyone else and the network is still completely unusable.
I'm sure there are providers who do this. Go find one, switch to them, and tell me you still want that.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
A duck always quacks. A mallard always quacks.
A throttle always slows your connection. Deprioritization queues some packets behind others, but results in faster speeds for all users.
This is not a duck.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If that contention control is implemented after your usage exceeds some threshold, then they are limiting the amount of your usage without any contention control. They should be allowed to do this, but they shouldn't say that it is unlimited, when they are, in fact, putting a limit on how much you can transfer without contention control, which is a different level of service than what another subscriber would have received at the exact same time on the exact same plan as you if they had simply not previously downloaded as much data as you had.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'll repeat: contention control actually effectively increases the limit of overall available bandwidth (e.g. you get faster speeds no matter which side of the priority queue you're on) by preventing people from talking over each other and causing massive floods of retransmitted packets.
I would agree with you if anyone were receiving worse service as a result, but the reality is quite the opposite.
I'm not sure how many different ways I can word that, but I feel as though I'm just repeating myself at this point. Since I'm already repeating myself:
If you've never implemented proper QoS on a congested network and seen the immediate impact it had on the traffic flow, this isn't something that is obvious to most people, so i fully understand how you might think it's a limit of sorts, but the reality is that it enables all users to effectively get their data instead of flooding the data with retransmitted packets as everyone attempts to talk over everyone else.
It's literally the opposite of a limit; it enables everyone to use more data. Period.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If they are deprioritizing your traffic only after you exceed some threshold then that threshold is certainly and quite literally a *LIMIT* on that level of service, and they are relegating you to a different level of service after that point. While physical limits to usage will always exist, those limits apply to everybody equally, regardless of what level of service they have paid for, and are not artificially imposed upon you by a policy that the company has chosen to follow, even if that policy only exists to maximize the overall throughput of the greatest number of subscribers.
I have a cell phone plan with unlimited nation-wide calling anytime... I pay extra for this service, and I regularly make use of it. if the company decided to change my terms of service so that if should make too many long distance calls that month because they determine that they don't have the capacity to allow me to make the number of calls that I am and still provide acceptable service to other customers, and so they started limiting the quality of service for my phone calls for the remainder of that billing period, as reasonable as it might be for my cell phone service provider to do this, they aren't offering me the same package that I signed up for, are they? How could they continue to call it unlimited when they are imposing a hard limit on it
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What you're missing, the point I'm really trying to drive home, is that deprioritizing heavier users increases available bandwidth for everyone, even the heavy users . This is true because it frees up bandwidth that would be wasted by the contention it prevents.
A limit, in the context of a service, is something that reduces your ability to utilize the service. This increases your ability to do so, regardless of which side of the queue you are on, ergo not a limit.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What you seem to be missing is that deprioritization of users who have already downloaded more than some threshold in the current billing cycle is still a *limit* on the level of service that those heavy users pay for. That they wouldn't be able to continue to get such service during periods of heavy congestion anyways is irrelevant because all users are affected equally at those times, and that is not a limit imposed directly by the provider but by the underlying physical architecture and the real-time demand for it.
You suggest that deprioritization increases your ability to use the service, but it does so by explicitly *limiting* the amount that you are allowed to use the service without deprioritization.
My objection is not that providers do this... my objection is only that they call a package "unlimited" when they have actually set a real limit on how much you can use it without deprioritization before they start deprioritizing your packets.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What you seem to be missing is that deprioritization of users who have already downloaded more than some threshold in the current billing cycle is still a *limit* on the level of service that those heavy users pay for.
I'm not missing that at all, actually. As I've stated previously, deprioritization increases the overall available bandwidth by eliminating retransmits caused be contention; that is, it stops people from having to talk over each other and repeat themselves, so everyone can talk, hear, and be heard. Without it, when there is congestion, throughout quickly approaches zero, for everyone; with it, everyone gets their data.
It's a logical fact that some (and I mean explicitly some, not all) users must be deprioritized when there is contention over limited available bandwidth (e.g. congestion) in order for the network to remain usable. If you deprioritize every user equally, you may as well have done nothing, the contention remains, and nobody can use the resource.
You suggest that deprioritization increases your ability to use the service, but it does so by explicitly *limiting* the amount that you are allowed to use the service without deprioritization.
And, without it, you're limited to only being able to use the service in the absence of contention over bandwidth.
That is a limit. Properly implemented QoS, which is what T-Mobile has here, is a workaround for that limit.
You very clearly aren't capable of understanding this. Again, I don't fault you for that, it's not something that's obvious (or, really, believable) unless you've actually seen it in action as I have. I'd say we should just agree to disagree, but I can't do that with someone whose opinion is based on a factually incorrect understanding.
It appears we're at an impasse, here.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
True... but that is not a limit that is determined by the provider, that is a limit created only by whatever threshold the current demand exists on the service is as it approaches its own limitations to provide that service. It is limited in the sense of "limited" being an adjective, but it is not "limited" in sense of it being a verb because the provider is not actually limiting anything... the only limits that apply are physical limitations that the provider themselves is just as subject to as any of their customers. If a provider does not have the capacity to cope with the threshold of so-called unlimited bandwidth users without affecting everybody's ability to use the service, and if continued quality service for the largest number of their customers is genuinely important to that company to the point that they will deprioritize packets of particular customers based on their historical patterns of usage rather than only on whatever current demands they are placing on their network, then that company should not call the service unlimited in the first place. And even if everyone's usage suffers during periods of high congestion, nobody suffers during periods of lower congestion, so it is genuinely possible for companies to offer unlimited packages if they wanted.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And even if everyone's usage suffers during periods of high congestion, nobody suffers during periods of lower congestion, so it is genuinely possible for companies to offer unlimited packages if they wanted.
Whereas, with properly implemented QoS, as we have here, nobody's usage suffers during periods of high or low congestion.
I'm done trying to educate you, though; you simply do not want to learn, because to do so would require you to admit you were wrong. Peruse my posting history and see what that looks like.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Deprioritized packets = inferior quality usage to what one would otherwise have received at the time. So yes... somebody's usage suffers, even if that suffering is for the good of the many, it is caused by a policy that the ISP decided upon rather than by the physical demands that are being placed upon the network at the time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Deprioritized packets = inferior quality usage to what one would otherwise have received at the time.
Wrong. When there is no congestion, priority doesn't have any effect and it doesn't matter of you're at the front of the queue or the back. However, when there is congestion, if left unmanaged it causes packet loss as more packets try to fit through the "pipe" than can actually fit, which leads to retransmits; that is, everyone's talking and trying to be heard, bot nobody can really hear anyone else, so everyone keeps repeating themselves. All of this just exacerbates the congestion, as more and more packets are dropped and begin the re-send cycle. It's a snowball effect, at first it's just one dropped packet being resent, so that packet has now been sent twice, but in that time 10 more packets were dropped and must be re-sent; and some of those re-sent packets will get dropped, so they'll have to be sent a 3rd time, maybe a 4th or a 5th, until you've got so many packets not making it through that the bulk of your traffic is retransmits. Eventually, those retransmits will exceed the available bandwidth (on top of new traffic which is already exceeding that physical limit) and the majority of those will be dropped, as well.
In that situation, once the snowball has gotten itself rolling, nobody gets any of their data until everyone shuts up and lets the noise die down. And nobody is coordinating to allow that to happen, so it never does unless network management is applied, to force the issue.
By queuing the packets of some users, you prevent this contention for bandwidth and avoid the dropped packets and eventual retransmit storm.
To be clear: left unmanaged, heavy users get nothing (just like everyone else) on a congested node; managed, they get the data they request.
Did you, after I've explained it several times, honestly not understand that? Or are you attempting to claim an unusable connection is of superior quality to one that is stable and usable?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.