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T-Mobile Responds To Verizon By Improving Its Own Unlimited Data Plan (theverge.com)
It didn't take long for T-Mobile to respond to Verizon's recently announced unlimited data plans. T-Mobile's CEO John Legere announced two improvements to the carrier's T-Mobile One unlimited plan that both take effect this Friday, reports The Verge. "Beginning February 17th, the plan will include HD video, an upgrade to the 480p/DVD-quality 'optimizations' that are currently in place." From the report: The other change Legere announced is related to the hotspot feature of T-Mobile One, which lets you share your smartphone's data connection with other devices. As of Friday, the plan will let customers use up to 10GB of high-speed data each month for tethering. That matches Verizon's plan, which also allows for 10GB of LTE tethering. But again, prior to today, T-Mobile One only allowed 3G hotspot speeds unless you paid extra for the T-Mobile One Plus plan. Lastly, Legere announced a promotion that will offer two lines of T-Mobile One for $100. A two-line family plan usually costs $120 per month. Unlike other carriers, T-Mobile includes taxes and fees in its advertised price -- so that should be all you pay month to month. Verizon charges $140 (plus taxes and fees) for a two-line unlimited plan. Assuming there's no sneaky fine print or trickery here, T-Mobile has at least for now regained its feature-for-feature price advantage compared against Verizon Unlimited. The company also has a higher threshold (28GB versus Verizon's 22GB) before its users might experience reduced speeds when the network is congested. In a long series of tweets, John Legere announced the new improvements/promo and took several jabs at Big Red. In one tweet, Legere wrote: "... And we all know no one was falling for [Verizon's] 'you don't need unlimited' bullshit. Hey @verizon - your ads are still up..."
I went over my ATT data limit & they throttled my data. So I visited their store last week and then upped my data allowed.
But I am still throttled most of the time on both cellphone and hotspot. Takes a long time to get a connection. Sometimes takes a minute to get something starting to load (looking at Mac's Activity Monitor.) Very often I'm limited to 20-40 KB/sec. ATT guys don't have an answer. Time to move to TMobile.
It does, but it seems annoying that all the BS about network reliability and fairness being behind cellular caps and throttling is so obviously dishonest when they expand their plan so quickly just to match a marketing trend.
If they had that much spare capacity to handle HD video and more data before, why did they wait to for Verizon before announcing it?
It's hard not to think they're all completely dishonest, the entire network except for a couple dozen towers is running at 20% utilization and they could jack caps to hundreds of gigs a month with no ill effects.