T-Mobile To Increase Deprioritization Threshold To 50GB This Week (tmonews.com)

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T-Mobile To Increase Deprioritization Threshold To 50GB This Week (tmonews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Monday September 18, 2017 @05:15PM from the ripple-effect dept.

After raising its deprioritization threshold to 32GB in May, it looks like T-Mobile will bump it up to 50GB on September 20th, according to a TmoNews source. The move will widen the gap between T-Mobile and its competition. For comparison, Sprint's deprioritization threshold is currently 23GB, while AT&T and Verizon's are both 22GB. TmoNews reports: It's said that this 50GB threshold won't change every quarter and no longer involves a specific percentage of data users. As with the current 32GB threshold, customers that exceed this new 50GB deprioritization threshold in a single month may experience reduced speeds in areas where the network is congested. T-Mobile hasn't issued an announcement regarding this news, but the official @TMobileHelp account recently tweeted "Starting 9/20, the limit will be increased!" in response to a question about this news.

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Now if only by jordanjay29 · 2017-09-18 17:52 · Score: 3, Informative

I could get a data connection when I'm outside of a big city or major thoroughfare. Rural areas are still T-Mobile's weak zones, and it's something I wish they'd focus a bit more of their efforts on. It's well established that if you want full coverage everywhere, the only choice is Verizon, but if T-Mobile were to actively work on solidifying their coverage they could change that perception and really have some ground to stand on as a competitor.
1. Re:Now if only by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-18 18:16 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  those rural areas is the only thing keeping verizon in the wireless business. i miss alltel; that's where verizon's huge rural network came from, but when they bought 'em, they threw out alltel's better customer service and better, cheaper alltel service plans.
2. Re:Now if only by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-18 18:24 · Score: 0
  
  You mean doing things like announcing using new spectrum first in rural areas - like say this - https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/...?
3. Re:Now if only by jordanjay29 · 2017-09-18 18:44 · Score: 1
  
  New spectrum is great, but it's going to be a while until most of their phones support it. And even brand new phones come out without supporting it (like the iPhone 8/X). So this does nothing for current phones out there or the customers using them for the foreseeable future.
4. Re:Now if only by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-18 23:26 · Score: 0
  
  They *have* been expanding rural coverage massively, with the caveat that most of it is band 12 LTE so you do need a fairly recent phone to use it. My experience in the rural midwest has been excellent for the past year or so, previously it was awful. Though looking at their coverage map it is still pretty bad out west.
5. Re:Now if only by Maxo-Texas · 2017-09-19 00:04 · Score: 1
  
  I'm in a major city and there is something wrong with the TMobile tower near my grocery store.
  It shows as functioning correctly but my current and prior phones never connect to it. Even when I'm only a half block away from ti. So my phone is connecting to towers much further away as a result. I've reported it twice now and nothings been done.
  
  --
  She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
6. Re: Now if only by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 00:13 · Score: 0
  
  They have rolled out millions of square miles of 700mhz to push into new rural areas, and are bolstering it with the 600mhz, where they just bought 20x20 in every rural part of the US. Their expansion has been pretty great over the last 2 years.
7. Re:Now if only by Ol+Olsoc · 2017-09-19 00:43 · Score: 1
  
  I could get a data connection when I'm outside of a big city or major thoroughfare. Rural areas are still T-Mobile's weak zones, and it's something I wish they'd focus a bit more of their efforts on. It's well established that if you want full coverage everywhere, the only choice is Verizon, but if T-Mobile were to actively work on solidifying their coverage they could change that perception and really have some ground to stand on as a competitor.
  Probably a feature the advertisers don't care about. Seems that most of that free data you are getting is just getting gobbled up by all of the important ads you are "served".
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
8. Re:Now if only by CastrTroy · 2017-09-19 00:55 · Score: 1
  
  Personally, I'm the exact opposite. I specifically picked my provider because they give me unlimited usage in the city and then charge me by the minute/message/KB when I'm outside of the city. It works out much cheaper for me in the end because I almost never leave the city, and when I do, I don't use my phone for extended periods of time. Music and maps can all be stored on the phone, so I actually find very little reason to connect to the internet between cities.
  People who really want high speed and plentiful internet in the middle of nowhere should be willing to pay for the cost of it, because that is the part of the network that is truly expensive to build and maintain. They will easily recoup the cost of building a tower in the middle of a city. Not so when you are 50 km out of town on some random country road. As somebody who could care less if I have data service on the highway, I don't want to be subsidizing other people who find they can't live without it for some reason.
  
  --
  
  Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
9. Re:Now if only by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 02:14 · Score: 0
  
  With Verizon it's the opposite. Three separate houses in the 14 years I've had Verizon - all in metropolitan Los Angeles separated by 40 miles - and every one of them had one bar of 1G or no signal from Verizon. I'm not talking about out in the sticks on the outskirts of town, but dead in the middle of suburbia with Target stores, Walmarts, and houses for miles. Each house has been verified by Verizon to have little or no network coverage, wherein they offer to "let" me purchase one of their range extenders. WiFi calling in the latest devices has been a godsend.
  Verizon prioritizes signal on freeways, and so all of their towers are near freeways and the antennas are tuned that direction. If you live on the outside of the spaghetti of freeways by even 500 yards, you get no signal because they're all pointed the other direction.
10. Re:Now if only by Karlt1 · 2017-09-19 02:53 · Score: 1
  
  but if T-Mobile were to actively work on solidifying their coverage they could change that perception and really have some ground to stand on as a competitor.
  Serving highly populated areas cheaply is T-Mobile's competitive advantage. Building out infrastructure in rural areas where they would have to spread the fixed cost among fewer people would cause them to raise rates. They compete on price. Verizon competes on coverage.
11. Re:Now if only by whoever57 · 2017-09-19 05:42 · Score: 1
  
  I think that T-Mobile recently started building out new infrastructure, using a lower frequency (600 MHz). This makes support of less dense areas cheaper. However, none of their current phones support it.
  https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/...
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
12. Re:Now if only by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 05:43 · Score: 0
  
  There is nothing "well established." There is a constantly evolving landscape of coverage, especially when Verizon tells 8500 people to pound sand because they are 'too rural.'
Argh. by Entropius · 2017-09-18 18:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't want to use 50GB of mobile data a month.
What I want is to make phone calls where the other person can hear me and vice versa, and use a few hundred megabytes of tethering per month without paying an arm and a leg.
Project Fi gives me the latter but not the former...
1. Re: Argh. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-18 19:11 · Score: 1
  
  T-Mobile One includes unlimited 3G tethering.
2. Re: Argh. by shitzu · 2017-09-18 19:18 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  What do you do with few hundred megabytes of *tethering*? Any computer with a modern OS will consume that in the first nanosecond of discovering an internet connection is available.
3. Re: Argh. by shitzu · 2017-09-18 19:19 · Score: 1
  
  Is their "unlimited 3g tethering" actually at 3g speeds or more like 2g/edge? I will be travelling to the US and need a month of internet.
4. Re: Argh. by mentil · 2017-09-18 20:19 · Score: 1
  
  He tethers a Palm Pilot to it.
  
  --
  Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
5. Re: Argh. by Entropius · 2017-09-18 21:05 · Score: 1
  
  My Lubuntu 17.04 system doesn't, at least. Not sure what win10 or something does.
6. Re: Argh. by shitzu · 2017-09-18 21:15 · Score: 1
  
  Have you actually tried it?
7. Re:Argh. by Ol+Olsoc · 2017-09-19 00:45 · Score: 1
  
  I don't want to use 50GB of mobile data a month.
  What I want is to make phone calls where the other person can hear me and vice versa, and use a few hundred megabytes of tethering per month without paying an arm and a leg.
  Project Fi gives me the latter but not the former...
  Sorry, but the advertisers need those 50 GByte to tell you about their wonderful products and services.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
8. Re: Argh. by kimvette · 2017-09-19 01:06 · Score: 2
  
  Bytes from PCs are bigger than from laptops, obviously, which is why they disallow tethering on the unlimited plans. /s
  
  --
  The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
9. Re: Argh. by kimvette · 2017-09-19 01:36 · Score: 1
  
  Ack!
  s/laptops/phones/
  D'oh!
  
  --
  The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
10. Re: Argh. by SuperKendall · 2017-09-19 01:54 · Score: 1
  
  When I've been overseas the 3G tethering was decently fast, certainly not edge speeds. Also T-Mobile had the option to pay some amount for higher speeds... the last two times I was abroad they had free higher speed roaming and then it was real LTE.
  
  --
  "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
11. Re:Argh. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 02:26 · Score: 0
  
  So why don't you use Verizon. They are perfect for this use scenario. They have better coverage and better calls than anyone, and tethering is free.
12. Re: Argh. by squiggleslash · 2017-09-19 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  3G. Bear in mind though that 3G is something like 256-512kbps, it's better than EDGE, but it's not suitable for, say, streaming video. In some ways this made T-Mobile One a downgrade from T-Mobile's previous offerings, as they allowed unlimited video with tethering (didn't come out of your data cap) if you used Binge On.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
13. Re: Argh. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 03:28 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, I was recently planning on dropping comcast, and then noticed this change, it was kind of a bummer.
  The 3g international roaming was needed though, so I had to switch.
14. Re: Argh. by shitzu · 2017-09-19 05:55 · Score: 1
  
  3g (at least in Europe) meant 2mbit and up. Edge was 256kbit/s.
15. Re: Argh. by shitzu · 2017-09-19 05:56 · Score: 1
  
  I am not talking about roaming. I was thinking of buying a prepaid sim for the month i spend in US.
16. Re: Argh. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 07:30 · Score: 0
  
  I wish I knew. I use an iPhone so T-Mobile cannot tell when I'm using hotspot. So every time I tried I got 4G speeds.
17. Re: Argh. by squiggleslash · 2017-09-19 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  I understand what you're saying, but in this case the terms are fake. Yes, technically EDGE was 256kbps, but when T-Mobile announced what people call EDGE speeds for throttled connections, the speed was about 64kbps. Likewise T-Mobile called the 256kbps throttled service "3G".
  The justification, I suppose, is that 256kbps is the minimum speed you can call "3G". (As an aside, EDGE is actually technically 3G - people rarely call it that because it sucked, but it fulfilled the ITU/etc technical criteria for IMT-2000, the specification that's normally cited as the technical definition of 3G.)
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
18. Re: Argh. by shitzu · 2017-09-19 18:25 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks. That was exactly what i suspected that their throttled 3g is not the same speed i get when i switch 4g/lte off on my iphone (which is pretty usable). I get up to 4 mbit/s on 3g.
  But at least in Europe (gsm), we used edge before anyone was even talking about 3g. And i know that from time to time i still get both logos on my iphone information bar when i go into the woods - and while internet is totally snappy with 3g logo, its near unusable when EDGE is displayed.
19. Re: Argh. by Entropius · 2017-09-20 13:04 · Score: 1
  
  Quite often. I wouldn't be asking to have this capability if I didn't use it.
Good by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-18 18:51 · Score: 0

50 GB ought be enough for everybody. After all, we haven't needed more than 640 kilobytes of RAM.
1. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-18 20:00 · Score: 0
  
  Or 55 mph on the freeways.
2. Re:Good by luther349 · 2017-09-19 04:54 · Score: 1
  
  you can use way more then 50gb they just say after that it may slow down during busy times and many people have tested it they see little to no slowdown.
3. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 08:31 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, make a smartass comment about "X is enough forever" while ignoring the fact that they raised the cap from 32 GB to 50 GB in complete awareness of the fact that technology and user demands change over time.
4. Re: Good by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 08:50 · Score: 0
  
  It's only in densely populated areas, and then it's only if they have a problem do they start throttling.
No data service in most of South Florida by Miamicanes · 2017-09-18 19:16 · Score: 1, Interesting

Warning to anyone in Florida considering a switch to T-mobile: their data network is nowhere CLOSE to having the robustness of Verizon and AT&T. Ask your friends & coworkers... they'll confirm it.
For the past week, T-mobile has had large-scale data outages across Florida that were MUCH more widespread and longer-lasting than Verizon's and AT&T's.
Simply put, T-mobile (like Sprint) uses cheaper, unreliable backhaul providers (like Comcast) for ALL data backhaul. Verizon and AT&T have real T-3 lines at some sites, and private microwave links to those sites from the rest.
T-mobile has NOWHERE NEAR the generator infrastructure (including private fuel depots and trucks) that Verizon and AT&T have. They use battery backup for almost everything.
Simply put, T-mobile's network is very "lean" and has very little/no ability to deal with large-scale commercial power outages (at least, insofar as data is concerned).
If you care about having internet access after a storm, T-mobile is definitely NOT the right network for you. You won't be satisfied with them. At the very least, buy a used Verizon JetPack wifi hotspot on ebay & keep it around so you can activate it for a month whenever T-mo fails you... because inevitably, it WILL.
1. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 00:15 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  TMobile has fiber at damn near every tower. Backhaul wasn't the problem, power was.
2. Re:No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 01:49 · Score: 1
  
  Real T-3 Lines...
  Catchpa: Antiques
3. Re:No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 02:42 · Score: 1
  
  Funny. Neighbor used my TMobile phone the day after the hurricane to call family because his Verizon phone didn't work.
  No power in county at the time.
4. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 02:58 · Score: 0
  
  That's kind of odd, around here the towers don't go down when they lose power. We get some rather big storms around here, nothing as large as the hurricanes this year, but we do get the occasional cyclone and my concern is usually keeping my device charged enough to connect.
  I wonder if the hurricane damaged the backup power source, because that's not typical.
5. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 03:00 · Score: 0
  
  I disagree. I noticed multiple towers which had wireless signal but no connection after irma. It's possible that the data circuits were simply overloaded, but that would be strange considering the limits of wireless throughput compared to a decent fibre connection.
6. Re:No data service in most of South Florida by squiggleslash · 2017-09-19 03:02 · Score: 2
  
  I live in South Florida and I'm a happy T-Mobile user. Absolutely nothing you've said describes my experience with the operator. I saw absolutely no outages during Irma.
  I'm not sure if you're making it up, if you used T-Mobile a decade ago and think they haven't improved since, or if you have less... virtuous motives... but basically what you've written is false.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
7. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Miamicanes · 2017-09-19 04:10 · Score: 1
  
  Ok, make that "DS-3". The point is, AT&A and Verizon use backhaul that comes with aggressive SLAs, backed up with escalating fines & liquidated damages whenever there's an outage. T-mo & Sprint generally don't (at least, not for non-voice/sms traffic).
  If your business has a DS-1& it goes down for 4+ hours, the telco ITSELF is going to start getting hit with HUGE hourly fines and automatically owe pre-negotiated liquidated damages unless it can convince the FCC and courts it followed their regulations & official procedures to the letter & was hit by a truly hopeless scenario (like flooding in New Orleans post-Katrina).
  A 4+ hour outage from Comcast or OtherCheapCo *might* get you a partial refund of the period's service charges... IF you bitch about it & they don't have a clause buried in the fine print that lets them off the hook.
  THAT is why businesses that depend upon data for their functioning & existence pay more for a real DS-3 line (and have a Ku-band satellite dish on-site ready to deploy if *that* fails).
  A hurricane side-swiping a city with brief category 2 winds & causing regional power outages is expected, and an army of generators and backhaul with aggressive SLAs is the accepted best-practice mitigation. An earthquake, asteroid-strike, or graupel-dumping July ice storm in Miami would qualify as "freak event nobody can be expected to plan for, let alone plan to mitigate".
8. Re:No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 04:13 · Score: 0
  
  If he had gone in to the settings.. Settings -> Mobile Netowkrs -> Network mode. And changed the networks the phone will connect to then your neighbor could have used his own phone most likely.
9. Re:No data service in most of South Florida by beanpoppa · 2017-09-19 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  Wow! Real T-3 lines? What is this, 2003?
10. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Miamicanes · 2017-09-19 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  As far as I know, phones with a T-mobile SIM card won't EVER data-roam on AT&T. I've seen plenty of spots in Florida (like Shark Valley in the Everglades) where T-mo phones will roam on AT&T for voice & sms, but won't use AT&T for data at all. Ditto, with Sprint roaming on Verizon. In both cases, AT&T and Verizon users both have working data, but T-mobile & Sprint users don't.
  Come to think about it, I've NEVER found a spot (in the US) where a phone with (US) T-mo SIM will data-roam. Ever.
11. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Miamicanes · 2017-09-19 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  Either you got extremely lucky & haven't left your house in 2 weeks, don't use lots of mobile data,
  or we have quite different opinions about what's included in the definition of "South Florida" (my definition includes coastal-urban Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Collier, and Lee counties, plus the upper keys north of Islamorada... the middle & lower keys are another matter entirely).
12. Re:No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 05:10 · Score: 0
  
  That has been my experience as well from Palm Beach down to Miami, no issues with T-Mobile.
13. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by whoever57 · 2017-09-19 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  Ok, make that "DS-3".
  
  So you are saying that their backhaul into their cell towers is 45Mbps. That is, less than a single phone can achieve today?
  I think you are talking out of your ass.
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
14. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 08:32 · Score: 0
  
  Northern Minnesota Tmobile data roaming on ATT works.
15. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Miamicanes · 2017-09-19 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  ... but, were you streaming music from Amazon Cloud, using waze nonstop, and other similar apps that depend upon continuous data connectivity all the way from WPB down to Miami? Or are you one of those people who could go for HOURS without noticing (or being traumatized by) data-connectivity loss, because you use your phone mainly for making voice calls?
  Generally speaking, if I'm someplace without working T-mobile internet, I'm going to be painfully aware of that fact within 7-9 minutes.
16. Re: No data service in most of South Florida by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 08:50 · Score: 0
  
  Obvious shill is obvious.
Take the shilling by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-18 19:34 · Score: 0

Oh look, another advertisement for one of America's much loved utilities.
1. Re:Take the shilling by Sique · 2017-09-18 22:48 · Score: 1
  
  Last time I checked, T-Mobile was a german provider, headquartered in Bonn, Germany. T-Mobile US is (after the merger with MetroPCS) 74% owned by T-Mobile Germany.
  
  --
  .sig: Sique *sigh*
Deprioritization by Nighttime · 2017-09-18 19:38 · Score: 5, Informative

For those wondering what the term means:
"customers who use more than xxGB of data in a single billing cycle will have their data usage prioritized below other customers for the remainder of that billing cycle.
"When your data usage is deprioritized, you may see slower data speeds when you’re at a location where the network is congested. If you move away from this area to a less congested spot or if the location becomes less congested, your data speeds should return to normal."
Source: http://www.tmonews.com/2017/05...

--
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
1. Re:Deprioritization by kimvette · 2017-09-19 00:57 · Score: 2
  
  Honestly that is far more reasonable than what the big three were doing previously to throttling (cutting off Unlimited customers for using "too much" data or switching them from unlimited to metered plans).
  
  --
  The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
2. Re:Deprioritization by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 03:32 · Score: 0
  
  In my experience this is an accurate representation of how they do it too.
  I redownloaded all of my cached music on a new phone and blew my hi-speed cap (it was 5gb at the time), and they didn't fuck with my speed most of the rest of the month.
3. Re:Deprioritization by beanpoppa · 2017-09-19 04:53 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. There's nothing like waking up in the morning and realizing that you accidentally left WiFi turned off, and it's spent the night uploading your entire 12GB of photos and video to the cloud over LTE.
4. Re:Deprioritization by lexman098 · 2017-09-19 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like a problem with your cloud backup app.
5. Re: Deprioritization by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 11:02 · Score: 0
  
  It still backed things up so no.
They have improved a lot by SuperKendall · 2017-09-19 01:57 · Score: 1

I've been on multiple road trips alll around America, including all kinds of western/Midwest states... T-mobile gas gotten way better, especially over the last two years. Wyoming was the only state I had any issues really, and that was because it's roaming and it wouldn't always use data from that carrier even though it should have been.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comment by WallyL · 2017-09-19 05:55 · Score: 1

I misread the title and thought it said, "T-Mobile to Increase Deportation Threshold to 50B This Week" and wondered how on earth T-Mobile got to determine how many illegal immigrants or their children the country deported. That was really weird, until I read more closely.
Thank god there was no merger with Sprint. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-19 09:30 · Score: 1

To think that Sprint was promising there'd be improved competition by merging with T-Mobile. Sprint is barely keeping ahead of the big two in terms of bandwidth allocation.
But it seems T-Mobile's increase may force Sprint to up theirs since both are the low-budget carriers. AT&T and Verizon follow suit to avoid losing subscribers in cities.