T-Mobile Unveils Data Stash

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I've heard off rollover minutes but rollover data? That's actually a pretty good idea.

T-Mobile today announced its next industry-rocking Un-carrier™ move − eliminating the infuriating wireless industry practice of confiscating unused data you’ve already paid for. With Un-carrier 8.0, high-speed data you don’t use each month automatically rolls into a personal Data Stash™ so you can use it when you need it for up to a year. And, the best part is that Data Stash is included at no extra charge for every single new and existing T-Mobile customer – individual, family or business – on an eligible postpaid Simple Choice plan who buys extra high-speed data for their smartphone or tablet.
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Steve said:
on an eligible postpaid Simple Choice plan who buys extra high-speed data for their smartphone or tablet.
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That's the catch.
If you just have the base 1GB of data plan, they won't be rolling over any unused data.
 
I'm on pre-paid so that leaves me out too. Dammit. I only use about 1GB of my 5GB alottment. Usually. But sub-3G sure sucks when they toss you into the dungeon for using up your allotment.
 
Good way for them to get rid of unlimited data. I'm still split. Id rather be throttled then get an allotment. Hmm. That 2gb plan might be worth snagging.
 
Very cool.

I'm still dumping them because their coverage is horrific outside of major cities :p
 
This excludes all the families that got in on the $100 plan for 4 phones at 2.5GB each deal from this summer.

Only qualifies for the rollover if you have a 3GB plan or higher.
 
Still reeks of cell phone companies trying to nickel and dime us to death. They just don't get it. Run a legitimate business with reasonable profit margins, and expand to meet the needs of your customers. Let them use what they can. They will love you for it and keep you happily at the #1 position.
 
Love me my T-Mo. Me and my wife barely use more than 1gb of data a month, when we do, so for $90/mo for unlimited calls, texts and 1gb each it's hard to consider any other carriers (not including the free non-data music streaming!).
 
I see no mention of hotspot data going into the data stash, that's the only thing I have a limit on anyway.
 
rhouck said:
Very cool.

I'm still dumping them because their coverage is horrific outside of major cities :p
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Their coverage is horrible in major city limits too sometimes. I dropped them because they couldn't get data coverage on the north side of DFW airport. I went with Cricket (AIO at the time) and never looked back.
 
ND40oz said:
I see no mention of hotspot data going into the data stash, that's the only thing I have a limit on anyway.
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they mentioned it on a FAQ here:
http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/data-stash-data-roll.html

Yes, you can use your total data allowance (paid data bucket + Data Stash) for tethering. For the Unlimited 4G LTE plan, which includes 5GB of Smartphone Mobile HotSpot data, the 5GB does not roll month to month.

I was hoping that we could roll over the hotspot limit but it looks like we cant
 
ml_paladin888 said:
they mentioned it on a FAQ here:
http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/data-stash-data-roll.html

Yes, you can use your total data allowance (paid data bucket + Data Stash) for tethering. For the Unlimited 4G LTE plan, which includes 5GB of Smartphone Mobile HotSpot data, the 5GB does not roll month to month.

I was hoping that we could roll over the hotspot limit but it looks like we cant
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Yeah, it looks like Unlimited 4G LTE doesn't even qualify:

What customer plans are not eligible for Data Stash?

Unlimited 4G LTE Plan
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"So this isn’t rocket science. It’s just that we seem to be the only company in this industry that cares enough to listen. That’s fine by me.”
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So... T-Mobile is admitting that what they, and every other carrier, have done up to this point is infuriating and that they haven't cared prior to this point in time.
At least he's honest.
 
meh, I'm of the mind of the metered usage, use more pay more pricing model. But pricing needs to be fair so you don't get gouged at the low (priced to make you upgrade to higher tiers) and high usage (outrageous overage charges/throttling).

I do however appreciate that t-mobile is shaking up the market with trying to be different.
 
Tweak42 said:
meh, I'm of the mind of the metered usage, use more pay more pricing model. But pricing needs to be fair so you don't get gouged at the low (priced to make you upgrade to higher tiers) and high usage (outrageous overage charges/throttling).

I do however appreciate that t-mobile is shaking up the market with trying to be different.
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I would be for metered too but the problem is that the amount of data you use has very little (almost nothing actually) to do with the costs incurred by the cell companies (or any ISP for that matter) for providing you that amount of data. Their costs are almost solely in keeping the network up and powered on.
 
gathagan said:
So... T-Mobile is admitting that what they, and every other carrier, have done up to this point is infuriating and that they haven't cared prior to this point in time.
At least he's honest.
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Legere has been referring to things like this as "customer pain points" Getting rid of this pain is the entire idea behind "UnCarrier." They are doing it small phases, and this would be phase 8 (hence the 8.0).

My guess is that they are experimenting to see what kind of changes result in the most growth, and they have to test one variable at a time in order to get useful data.

You can't simply ask the customer what they want because they don't really know.
As Henry Ford once said "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse"
 
Sorry tmoble you can't call it data stash, the NSA already has that market cornered.
 
Data Stash is made possible by T-Mobile’s unique Data Strong network design
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T-Mobile does many good things and this is good (though they're not the first to do it), but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with their network (unless by network they mean internal servers running software that manages data caps/billing).

I haven't priced T-Mobile, but right now, I can't help but think that Cricket's plans are better and I suspect that the network is too, since it's AT&T (the company we all love to hate)
 
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the routers and switches on no matter what? I personally think the roll over data is stupid compared to unlimited data. Like you could really roll over data, or minutes for that matter.

May have seemed like a good idea in the past for so many minutes and all but in this highly computerized world, they should be delivering unlimited data and not taking advantage of the customer. Bandwidth with all the latest advances in technology, isn't running out.

One issue I was noticing with insight up in KY was that some of their systems needed upgrading or had buggy connections. My parents had to change ISP because of this reason, Insight was blaming my parents for an issue on their end, so my parents cut their service and changed to windstream. Didn't have any problem anymore after that.

What I am saying is that there is all this money flowing into these ISPs and Mobile phone companies, they could easily support the bandwidth with unlimited data, if not then they need to run more fiber backbone lines.
 
techrat said:
So...

How would you roll over unlimited LTE anyway?
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Because the only way to get hotspot data is to be on the unlimited plan. But hotspot data is still limited and it would be useful for it to roll it over into the data stash as well. Depending on the month, I could use none of it or I could hit the threshold in a few days.
 
450 said:
I'm on the 2.5GB promo plan - I get 1GB hotspot.
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I don't think they're offering that any longer, they dropped it at the end of Oct. IIRC. But that plan wouldn't qualify for data stash anyway even if you could rollover hotspot data.
 
ND40oz said:
Because the only way to get hotspot data is to be on the unlimited plan. But hotspot data is still limited and it would be useful for it to roll it over into the data stash as well. Depending on the month, I could use none of it or I could hit the threshold in a few days.
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There are ways to get around this limit entirely. Primarily it requires using a non-PC browser useragent, or simply using a VPN on the PC after tethering.

This was literally all that was required to get unlimited tethering on the older android phones, as the T-mobile tether-detection isn't terribly smart

When I upgraded to a Nexus 5 I also had to go in and edit an sql database (/data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db) and add a new entry (tether_dun_required) with a value of 0, otherwise the phone creates a separate DUN (VPN?) connection just for the tethered devices, which t-mobile also detects. Setting it to 0 forces the tethered devices to share the same connection as the phone.

I'm most of the way through the current billing month, and I have used almost 30GB, most of which was streaming TV on my PC.

I love having 35mbit+ speeds (up to 70mbit in some places) for only $10 a month.
 
It's a misnomer.
The $100 is on top of the voice and text access. It's actually significantly more than $100/mo for 2 lines.
 
Modred189 said:
It's a misnomer.
The $100 is on top of the voice and text access. It's actually significantly more than $100/mo for 2 lines.
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If you are referring to the unlimited data family plan, where did you hear that the $100 was for data alone?
 
sir-gold said:
There are ways to get around this limit entirely. Primarily it requires using a non-PC browser useragent, or simply using a VPN on the PC after tethering.

This was literally all that was required to get unlimited tethering on the older android phones, as the T-mobile tether-detection isn't terribly smart

When I upgraded to a Nexus 5 I also had to go in and edit an sql database (/data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db) and add a new entry (tether_dun_required) with a value of 0, otherwise the phone creates a separate DUN (VPN?) connection just for the tethered devices, which t-mobile also detects. Setting it to 0 forces the tethered devices to share the same connection as the phone.

I'm most of the way through the current billing month, and I have used almost 30GB, most of which was streaming TV on my PC.

I love having 35mbit+ speeds (up to 70mbit in some places) for only $10 a month.
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Are you actually physically tethering the phone or using wifi hotspot?

That being said, there are plenty of ways around it, but I'm perfectly fine using it within the usage guidelines. I just wish they allowed you to carry over that data allowance as well.

Modred189 said:
It's a misnomer.
The $100 is on top of the voice and text access. It's actually significantly more than $100/mo for 2 lines.
Click to expand...

I pay $140 a month for 5 lines, 3 of them are unlimited talk and text with 2.5GB of data and the other 2 are unlimited talk/test/LTE with hotspot. If you're getting quoted significantly more then $100 a month for 2 lines then whoever is setting it up is doing something very wrong.
 
bmellis1984 said:
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the routers and switches on no matter what? I personally think the roll over data is stupid compared to unlimited data. Like you could really roll over data, or minutes for that matter.
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There is no unlimited 3G/4G data in the U.S. (AFAIK). My guess is that the rollover Data is at max speed.

I don't know the details of T-Mobile, but I saw it goes for up to a year, so assuming you can rollover 100% of your unused data each month, if you have a 2GB plan and you use 1GB for 11 months, you'd have 12GB available in the 12th month and all of that would be at the max available speed.
 
sir-gold said:
There are ways to get around this limit entirely. Primarily it requires using a non-PC browser useragent, or simply using a VPN on the PC after tethering.

This was literally all that was required to get unlimited tethering on the older android phones, as the T-mobile tether-detection isn't terribly smart
Click to expand...

I think most tethering detection is using useragent detection. And in most cases it's looking for specific user agents. If yours isn't one of those, it's not tethering. I'm sure this will change at some point. VPNs will almost always work as well. However, given that most carriers also cap fast data on unlimited plans at 2 or 3GB, you're probably not going to get that much tethering in.
 
It is kind of funny seeing how everyone is just repeating the old days of long distance minutes. My guess is after it all goes in a complete circle we will be back to unlimited data
 
BTW I would like to see someone just say $X / month for 1GB then $5 each for each gigabyte thereafter. Want to tether, hot spot, connect tablets whatever you want go ahead. Getting back to my old argument if you just pay / gb the phone companies will never try to limit anything. They will be giving away free tablets, phones, watches what ever it takes.
 
This is great and all. essentially the data equivalent of AT&T's old roll-over minutes.


That being said, it doesn't make up for the miserable coverage of a third tier carrier.

As I see it:

Tier 1:
Verizon Wireless

Tier 2:
AT&T

Tier 3:
T-Mobile
Sprint

Tier 4+:
Everyone else
 
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