T-Mobile Slow Down ‘Unlimited’ LTE Data in Some Circumstances

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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T-Mobile has a new name game it’s playing with its subscribers. It’s called slowing down connection speeds of unlimited customers, while claiming the company still doesn’t use throttling to adjust connecting speeds. A rose is a rose is a rose and all that. :D

Officially, T-Mobile says that this isn’t throttling but “de-prioritizing” certain users, however the effect is the same: During times of heavy congestion, your connection slows drastically.
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As long as their user contract allows this I don't see an issue with this ... it would be more irresponsible if they didn't actively manage their network ... which is worse, slowing users who have a history of network intensive activity during the congested period or potentially slowing all users to accommodate the high intensity users ... seems like a reasonable middle ground, especially since it returns to the normal configuration when the congestion ends or when the user moves to a new tower that isn't congested
 
I would be curious to see bandwidth numbers of this "top 3% of users."
 
I'm actually surprised to see no posts with people freaking out. Perhaps because it's T-Mo.
 
I don't mind the practice as much as I mind the fact that companies try to claim they don't do this when advertising.
 
atp1916 said:
I would be curious to see bandwidth numbers of this "top 3% of users."
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I can only speak for myself, but I used 35gb last month and that is pretty close to typical for me. I haven't been throttled at all. In fact, my Tmo connection is better than my Comcast cable.
 
kbrickley said:
As long as their user contract allows this I don't see an issue with this ... it would be more irresponsible if they didn't actively manage their network ... which is worse, slowing users who have a history of network intensive activity during the congested period or potentially slowing all users to accommodate the high intensity users ... seems like a reasonable middle ground, especially since it returns to the normal configuration when the congestion ends or when the user moves to a new tower that isn't congested
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OR they could lets say just have the abiltiy to provide the service/product they are selling.

oh im so sorry miss smith. today you only get a quat when you buy a gallon of milk because we sold so much more milk than we bought. of cuase you still have to pay for a gallon.

The reason its ok to screw you customers as long as its in the contract is why america is falling so far behind on Internet and IT intergration. there is no motivation for the companies to push forward when they can just f#ck their customers insread.

USA is nearing a third world country state in IT intergration. the amount of unnecessary slow process paperworks, you have to do when living int he states is beyond imagniable if you are used to are more moderne sociaty.
I had to go physically up to my water provider with a void check to make up automatic payment. Thats like falling back to the 60's if northen europe
my previous apertment you had to pay by check. at least last year they went online but still not automatic payment.

I have never experinced so and old and obsolete infrastructure as after moving to the states.
 
Lith1um said:
I can only speak for myself, but I used 35gb last month and that is pretty close to typical for me. I haven't been throttled at all. In fact, my Tmo connection is better than my Comcast cable.
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I'm not nearly as high in usage. But it's been damn good, can even watch YT. Some areas I get better than my COX (30/20).
 
Lith1um said:
I can only speak for myself, but I used 35gb last month and that is pretty close to typical for me. I haven't been throttled at all. In fact, my Tmo connection is better than my Comcast cable.
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We have the 2 lines for $100 with unlimited text/min/LTE Data. I average ~20 GB/month. My wife averages ~10 GB. I've never noticed any slowdown. Heck lots of times while using Tubemate to download Youtube videos I see speeds in excess of 60 Mbit/sec. This is faster than I've ever seen on my cable line.
 
SvenBent said:
OR they could lets say just have the abiltiy to provide the service/product they are selling.

oh im so sorry miss smith. today you only get a quat when you buy a gallon of milk because we sold so much more milk than we bought. of cuase you still have to pay for a gallon.

The reason its ok to screw you customers as long as its in the contract is why america is falling so far behind on Internet and IT intergration. there is no motivation for the companies to push forward when they can just f#ck their customers insread.

USA is nearing a third world country state in IT intergration. the amount of unnecessary slow process paperworks, you have to do when living int he states is beyond imagniable if you are used to are more moderne sociaty.
I had to go physically up to my water provider with a void check to make up automatic payment. Thats like falling back to the 60's if northen europe
my previous apertment you had to pay by check. at least last year they went online but still not automatic payment.

I have never experinced so and old and obsolete infrastructure as after moving to the states.
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It's a balancing act though (especially for mobile providers) ... do you build capacity for the extreme burst conditions (that will sit idle and wasted when it isn't needed) or do you build for some steady state condition (with a little burst capacity) and dynamically make adjustments based on usage

As to the USA not being modern I pay every single one of my bills online (I minimize auto payments to control the flow of money through my accounts) ... it is certainly possible to find the occasional business (especially local ones, like utilities) that might not want to go online since there is a cost to that ... big business can offset the credit and wire fees or charge them directly to the customers ... for smaller businesses it might not be worth the hassle ... with some businesses (cough cough Steam cough cough) you can't deal with them any other way but online (and on their terms) ... I would say that in aggregate the USA is very modern in terms of IT integration
 
I use around 15GB a month, mainly streaming Sirius Sat Radio in my vehicle during my commute each morning and afternoon here in Seattle. I drive around 2 hours combined per day for the too and from portion of my commute. I just tested my LTE signal where I live a few mins ago, I was getting 45mb down and 21mb, amazing speeds for a cell phone (A Google Nexus 6)
 
356g so far this month :S

But my phone also hotspots my unlimited connection to my house and doesn't show as hot-spotting to t mobile so....
 
Don't think this will apply to me. I've got T-Mo's unlimited LTE but am on wifi 99%. My total data usage for two devices (iPhone & iPad) in April was 2.85 MB. :p
 
It's in the terms and conditions... Which people never read.
 
Avg 70GB/mo

I download a-lot, like everything.

Never had a problem.

Makes me wonder how much these people are using.
 
kbrickley said:
As long as their user contract allows this I don't see an issue with this ...
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Why? They're lying:

slowing down connection speeds of unlimited customers, while claiming the company still doesn’t use throttling to adjust connecting speeds
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So it's okay for a company to lie so long as they say they're allowed to lie in the contract? Is that the gist of it?
 
tetris42 said:
So it's okay for a company to lie so long as they say they're allowed to lie in the contract? Is that the gist of it?
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They aren't lying, in the contract/terms of use they tell you exactly what they're doing. Just because 98% of people don't read the agreement doesn't mean the company is lying.
 
tetris42 said:
Why? They're lying:



So it's okay for a company to lie so long as they say they're allowed to lie in the contract? Is that the gist of it?
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I reviewed the tmobile website and they state in the terms on their plan page

Network Management: Service may be slowed, suspended, terminated, or restricted for misuse, abnormal use, interference with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users, or significant roaming. LTE is a trademark of ETSI.

I would assume they have similar language in their contracts ... Doesn't look like they are lying
 
kbrickley said:
It's a balancing act though (especially for mobile providers) ... do you build capacity for the extreme burst conditions (that will sit idle and wasted when it isn't needed) or do you build for some steady state condition (with a little burst capacity) and dynamically make adjustments based on usage

As to the USA not being modern I pay every single one of my bills online (I minimize auto payments to control the flow of money through my accounts) ... it is certainly possible to find the occasional business (especially local ones, like utilities) that might not want to go online since there is a cost to that ... big business can offset the credit and wire fees or charge them directly to the customers ... for smaller businesses it might not be worth the hassle ... with some businesses (cough cough Steam cough cough) you can't deal with them any other way but online (and on their terms) ... I would say that in aggregate the USA is very modern in terms of IT integration
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Wow online payment. That is modern.

Tell me, does your bank still issue 1970s-technology charge cards? Sorry, that was rhetorical-of course they do. How about your parking meters? They still 1970s-era tech charge card readers? Fast-food joints? Wally-World?

Costs everyone billions in fraud every year-and no one is doing anything about it.


scojer said:
It's in the terms and conditions... Which people never read.
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Is that an excuse?

If people read (well enough to be able to understand and explain) the EULAs and TOSes of software no one on Earth would ever finish installing Windows or get around to using their iPhone or Android.
 
scojer said:
They aren't lying, in the contract/terms of use they tell you exactly what they're doing. Just because 98% of people don't read the agreement doesn't mean the company is lying.
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Wow, what do you call this then (from the article):

"
T-Mobile CEO John Legere this week said flatly that with unlimited LTE plans “we do not throttle” customers that use too much data.
"

So the CEO, who basically represents the company is lying. I guess we're really arguing semantics then.
 
kbrickley said:
I reviewed the tmobile website and they state in the terms on their plan page

Network Management: Service may be slowed, suspended, terminated, or restricted for misuse, abnormal use, interference with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users, or significant roaming. LTE is a trademark of ETSI.

I would assume they have similar language in their contracts ... Doesn't look like they are lying
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So here's how it breaks down:

Their terms say they MAY throttle.
Their CEO says in plain English to the public, they DO NOT throttle.
In practice, they DO throttle.
 
tetris42 said:
So here's how it breaks down:

Their terms say they MAY throttle.
Their CEO says in plain English to the public, they DO NOT throttle.
In practice, they DO throttle.
Click to expand...

We are getting into the intricacies of corporate speak but they could define throttling as a situation where the user is limited for the remainder of their billing period ... since this "de-prioritizing" is only a temporary performance restriction while a user remains connected to an overloaded tower and immediately goes away once either the tower is no longer overloaded or the user connects to a new tower it isn't throttling (they way the word is traditionally defined by the industry) ... if people don't like the nuanced definition there is always Sprint (since neither AT&T nor Verizon have unlimited data plans) ... a company should be able to manage their network and this is hardly the first that a CEO has said something that requires a nuanced clarification from their marketing or legal groups
 
A T-Mobile employee wrote in the comments that T-Mobile is slowing down the connections of unlimited customers during hours of network congestion if they’re in the top 3% of overall data users.
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Throttling due to network congestion and evening performance for all customers is one thing. Selectively targeting customers who use too much "unlimited" imo is the problem.

If your service is not "unlimited" than don't advertise or label it as such. The moment you start targeting and restricting access due to the amount of "unlimited" service customers use... it's false advertising. I don't care what the small print says.



: not limited in number or amount
 
Wow. I have difficulty breaking 3gb a month on my cell. Sounds like i'm the lightweight around here.

(it's probably quite a bit more gb's on wifi)
 
I think eventually this will settle down with all the carriers eliminating unlimited data (since it is not to their advantage to replace a land based service) ... I suspect they will eventually settle on a data limit in the 10 GB range (or a little less) ... that will satisfy more than 99% of their users and they can start cutting loose the high data users when their contracts expire
 
This! This right here is the biggest horse shit I have experienced with Tmobile. I switched to Tmobile about 4 years ago because Sprint was slow as shit. When I finally switched I was happy, my speeds were over 20-30mbps near my office and I could browse and youtube all I wanted. Up until about 8 months ago things started slowing down. Then more, then more until finally I am sitting at 0.30mbps, yes 0. fucking 30. I have been back and forth with regional VPs and engineers and other bullshit to get this sorted out and have been dicked around, given a signal booster and all this other bullshit that just doesn't work. It's pissing me off to no end knowing this could possibly be the reason for it. I pay for unlimited LTE and I used to use roughly 6-10gb of data a month. After having these speed issues my data has dropped to less than 1GB. Fuck tmobile, they have 1 week to fix their supposed "congestion" issues in my area until I leave them.
 
T-Mobile's coverage is so piss poor, how do you tell the difference between them slowing down deliberately and the usual crappy network performance?

There is a reason why Sprint and T-Mobile are cheaper. And it isn't out of charity.
 
Lith1um said:
I can only speak for myself, but I used 35gb last month and that is pretty close to typical for me. I haven't been throttled at all. In fact, my Tmo connection is better than my Comcast cable.
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35gbs?? on a cell phone?

let me tell me how much that would cost you in canada.

1750 dollars.
 
damicatz said:
T-Mobile's coverage is so piss poor, how do you tell the difference between them slowing down deliberately and the usual crappy network performance?

There is a reason why Sprint and T-Mobile are cheaper. And it isn't out of charity.
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Eh, it works for me, I can download at approximate 50Mbps at my house, sure at some family members house its quite a bit slower, but the majority of places I'm using it in a major city it works fine.
 
Swat said:
356g so far this month :S

But my phone also hotspots my unlimited connection to my house and doesn't show as hot-spotting to t mobile so....
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Whenever I would hit the 50gb mark all web pages would suddenly say "please subscribe to our mobile hotspot option blah blah blah". If I changed the user agent in Chrome to a mobile browser I could get along just fine, along with all other non HTML traffic. Tmobile isnt stupid, they will do some deep packet inspection and filter out what they perceive to be tethering traffic. Dont see how you get 300+ gigs and not put a blip on their radar.

But anyway still had to switch to Verizon so I can stream uninterrupted when driving out of state. Tmobile is only good for the inner city.
 
The biggest reason I switched to Tmo is not throttling...although it's disappointing to hear it is happening, however you want to define it, the fact is I was constantly getting throttled on ATT, even with their grandfathered "unlimited" plan.

But as of today I have yet to be throttled on Tmo.
 
Xrave said:
The biggest reason I switched to Tmo is not throttling...although it's disappointing to hear it is happening, however you want to define it, the fact is I was constantly getting throttled on ATT, even with their grandfathered "unlimited" plan.

But as of today I have yet to be throttled on Tmo.
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I dont even consider this throttling. It is, but not the way its normally used.

Usually throttled means "You used X and we dont want you to use more so your slowed now!".

TMobile seems to be saying "You used X and we need capacity so you only get Y till were better then you get X again."

All of which is explicitly stated they can and will do in the contract you sign. People just want to complain.
 
I wonder if those top 3% of users are those who find ways around tethering rules set in place by Tmobile.
 
kbrickley said:
As long as their user contract allows this I don't see an issue with this ... it would be more irresponsible if they didn't actively manage their network ... which is worse, slowing users who have a history of network intensive activity during the congested period or potentially slowing all users to accommodate the high intensity users ... seems like a reasonable middle ground, especially since it returns to the normal configuration when the congestion ends or when the user moves to a new tower that isn't congested
Click to expand...

This bullshit again.

The Internet does not work that way.

It's not the users fault, but the ISP/providers who oversell their nodes and do not have the infrastructure to support all of their customers, especially at peak times when there's a lot of people on.

The "speed" at which someone downloads does not take away from you, they are paying for space on this "highway" the same as you.

Because someone downloads a "lot" does not mean they are somehow taking away from you or someone else, they have the same "space" on the highway as you and everyone else does, the amount of data they download does not somehow magically take away from other users.
 
Stiler said:
This bullshit again.

The Internet does not work that way.

It's not the users fault, but the ISP/providers who oversell their nodes and do not have the infrastructure to support all of their customers, especially at peak times when there's a lot of people on.

The "speed" at which someone downloads does not take away from you, they are paying for space on this "highway" the same as you.

Because someone downloads a "lot" does not mean they are somehow taking away from you or someone else, they have the same "space" on the highway as you and everyone else does, the amount of data they download does not somehow magically take away from other users.
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I didn't mean to imply that, if that is how you interpreted it ... however, all internet infrastructure has a maximum capacity (XX Terabits/s or YY Gigabits/s ... etc) ... they are going to split that capacity among all the users connecting to the infrastructure at a given moment ... hardwired infrastructure can control who is connected to their infrastructure since each account gets a single pipe out (and if more than one user is using that pipe the total capacity gets split or shared between them); the pipe is also regulated to allow a maximum speed (or minimum speed) depending on the user's purchased tier

Mobile access is trickier though ... depending on the range of your cell towers you will have a combination of fixed users (people who live or work in the tower radius or with mobile access points) and dynamic users (people who just wander into the cell tower radius (visitors, commuters, etc) ... these can be harder to predict and manage ... for instance, LAX has notorious tricky cell coverage ... they could put in enough coverage so that the maximum number of travelers could get maximum performance as they travel through the cell zone (but that would be extraordinarily expensive), or they can put in some nominal amount that will be slow and poor performing at peak load, but meeting performance goals at off peak ... although there isn't necessarily a direct correlation between historical usage and load it isn't unreasonable to assume that people with high historical usage are more likely to pull maximum loads from the towers so by slowing them down you are potentially leaving more capacity for the casual user ... it may not be perfect but I suspect it works or they wouldn't do it ;)
 
Yes, my point was though that the "amount" someone downloads has no impact in terms of them taking up more or "less" of the space they have.

If I download a 1gb file, I am still going to be taking up as much space as the "speed" of what I pay for allows, the size of the download doesn't take away space from other users, rather it's the simple fact of too many people at once trying to use the limited space they've oversold to too many people in the area.
 
Stiler said:
Yes, my point was though that the "amount" someone downloads has no impact in terms of them taking up more or "less" of the space they have.

If I download a 1gb file, I am still going to be taking up as much space as the "speed" of what I pay for allows, the size of the download doesn't take away space from other users, rather it's the simple fact of too many people at once trying to use the limited space they've oversold to too many people in the area.
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Mobile capacity is always going to be more limited than fixed capacity ... for land capacity they can decide exactly what load level they want to support since they know exactly how many total customers they have ... mobile is always going to be unpredictable since people move in and out of the tower's range ... many high capacity users in this thread indicate they have never been throttled so they probably live in the range of towers that have excess capacity ... others have been ... no responsible company is going to build capacity into their system that will be idle most of the time and is only there for burst conditions (as that would be a waste of money)

Now, in the future I expect more features to be available in homes that will be always on (cameras, voice interface, etc) ... as we transition to these types of services where there is a constant stream of data going in and coming out of the home it will be far easier to estimate the necessary capacity so that overload conditions happen less frequently (like power ... we get few overload blackouts but they do occur occasionally)
 
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