Kevin Bostic
T-Mobile executives at the company's "Uncarrier" event on Tuesday appeared to come down on both sides of the throttling issue, noting that users exceeding their allotments will see slower speeds, but that heavy data users will not see their bandwidth throttled.
Speaking at the company's media event in New York, T-Mobile CEO John Legere addressed the possibility of throttling. T-Mobile customers with set data limits — the base 500MB plan or the 2.5GB plan, for example — will see their their speeds dropping to 3G levels should they go over those limits.
The company's execs say that it will not, however, throttle the bandwidth of high-data consumers on unlimited plans, so long as they aren't inhibiting the fair access of other customers.
"We put a fair use policy in," Legere said during the event's question and answer section. That fair use policy is aimed more at keeping the network open to other wireless customers, and T-Mobile apparently already has customers using massive amounts of data without being throttled. One exec noted that some customers are using more than 50GB per month, but the times in which they are doing so aren't adversely affecting other customers.
"If there is ever a case where we're going to use a fair use policy," VentureBeat quotes Legere saying, "we're going to post it so you can have a look at it. It's not a number — if someone is having a party at 3am [using a ton of data], I don't really care."
T-Mobile's executives on stage attempted to parry accusations that they were trying to have it both ways on throttling. They pointed out that all of the rate plans get top 4G speeds up until their data limits. Speaking with Barrons, T-Mobile marketing officer Mike Sievert said that the company had tailored its pricing and data rates to fit the usage patterns of power users.
Throttling has become point of contention between the carriers on one side and heavy data users and consumer advocates on the other. AT&T — as do most of the major carriers — touts its plans as offering "unlimited data," but the network drops user speeds once they pass a 5GB threshold within a month. In February of last year, an iPhone user successfully sued AT&T over its throttling measures, winning $850 from the carrier.
The carrier also announced that its version of the iPhone 5 will not initially support T-Mobile's Wi-Fi Calling technology. Speaking with Engadget, Sievert said that Wi-Fi Calling "is not coming" at launch. Pressed on the issue, Sievert said that T-Mobile "loves its Wi-Fi Calling feature, and I'll have to leave it at that."
The Wi-Fi Calling feature allows T-Mobile customers abroad to receive calls from their US phone number through a Wi-Fi connection anywhere in the world. The feature is currently available on a number of Android devices on the carrier.
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17 Comments
Fortunately there is no contract so if you find them to be throttling you, leave. No fees, no questions asked. That's why they don't throttle.
If the 4G network can only handle so much traffic, then bumping you down to 3G (no overage fee, no limit) after a certain point seems like a reasonable compromise. And they let you set what that point is. I'm more interested in the details of limits/throttling with tethering.
The wifi calling is a great feature. Carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint offer Femtocells for people with poor indoor coverage at home. Sprint gives this device to users for free but I think Verizon and AT&T may charge for the actual device and even a monthly fee which seems insane to me. These devices are a godsend if you happen to get poor indoor coverage at home and in suburbia that happens a lot more frequently than carriers want to admit. But being able to completely skip those femtocells devices completely and just let your phone connect directly over wifi is a very neat trick. I have never used T-Mobile but I thought that wifi calling was activated by an Android app. Maybe they are dancing around the issue because they need to get the iOS app approved by Apple first to enable the wifi calling feature.
The main purpose of throttling and limits is to scare customers into paying more money. It's the same thing they used to do with minutes and "overage" charges, where most people were scared into buying more minutes than they needed.
Don't listen to anyone who starts defending this with talk about infrastructure investment, limited bandwidth, blah, blah, blah... It's all about carriers maximizing they get out of you each month through fear and intimidation.
This "fair use" policy is what makes sense from a network management standpoint. If bandwidth is temporarily saturated, transmission rates may get cut back. If it's not, it has no effect on the carriers network, so what's the point... other than to bleed as much money out of you as they can, if that's the way they do business.
So let me get this right- I have been a T-Mobile customer since last year and I will soon be getting unlimited 3G data speeds for $50 a month (since I have a 4s I can get 3G max speeds anyway). Because right now for $50 I am getting 500mb at up to 4g speeds and then it is capped at sloooow 2g. Only 2 months ago the cap was after 50mb but Tmobile upped it to 500mb for free. So if you have a 4s you will be getting unlimited max speed data for $50 month, no contract? Sounds pretty awesome and proves that my service has improved exponentially for the same price over a few short months. Now if they can just hurry up with the 1900mhz frequency bands for compatibility with my iPhone's 3G antenna... Will visual voicemail, FaceTime over cellular, and data during voice calls work on the 4s as well?