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Networking Cellphones Handhelds Wireless Networking

T-Mobile Starts Going After Heavy Users of Tethered Data 346

Posted by timothy from the limited-resources-unlimted-desires dept.
VentureBeat reports that T-Mobile CEO John Legere has announced that T-Mobile will cut off (at least from "unlimited" data plans) customers who gloss over the fine print of their data-use agreement by tethering their unlimited-data phones and grab too much of the network's resources. In a series of tweets on Sunday, Legere says the company will be "eliminating anyone who abuses our network," and complains that some "network abusers" are using 2TB of data monthly. The article says, "This is the first official word from the carrier that seems to confirm a memo that was leaked earlier this month. At that time, it was said action would be taken starting August 17 and would go after those who used their unlimited LTE data for Torrents and peer-to-peer networking."
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T-Mobile Starts Going After Heavy Users of Tethered Data More

T-Mobile Starts Going After Heavy Users of Tethered Data

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  • You keep using that word. I don't think it means (Score:5, Funny)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @04:35AM (#50424889) Journal

    ... what you think it means.

    • Re:You keep using that word. I don't think it mean (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sqr(twg) ( 2126054 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @05:10AM (#50424977)

      TFA abbreviates the quote from T-Mobile CEO John Legere. Here it is in full:

      "Marketing thought we could call it 'unlimited', because that would sell. But then engineering pointed out that our network couldn't support that kind of load. So we had legal work out deals with the handset manufacturers so that the phone would limit data usage anyway. That way, we could call it 'unlimited', but in reality, it would be limited; Clever eh? But our customers noticed, and are downloading apps that hide their tether usage, rooting their phones, writing code to mask their activity, etc. It's all their fault. I mean, obviously we have the right to lie to our customers, and put whatever software we want on their phones. But now they are changing that software! They are thieves I tell you. THIEVES!"

      • Re:You keep using that word. I don't think it mean (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @06:28AM (#50425135) Homepage Journal

        Essentially it's OK to lie if you offer a product but not if you buy it.

        It also highlights that operators try to tie specific devices to services instead of managing the "problem" on the server/provider side.

        In all it's about being open, not locking in the customer. It's better to be straight with the customer about the fact that there is a ceiling on the usage.

        Then there's another question of how the users really are able to run up a traffic volume in the terabyte class. That's actually pretty amazing, but if someone is streaming HD movies I can imagine that it may be chewing away the bytes pretty fast, but according to some a HD movie is about 2GB/hour. So that means 1000 hours for 2TB - and that means that you need to watch movies every hour in a month and still not reach 2TB.

        • You realize that these are people are sold unlimited data for their phone itself, with metered tethering. The complaint is that they're bypassing the tethering limit, not that they're using unlimited data for the phone itself. Nowhere did T-Mobile ever sell them unlimited tethered data.

          From the open letter itself:
          http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/i... [t-mobile.com]

          Here’s what’s happening: when customers buy our unlimited 4G LTE plan for their smartphones we include a fixed amount of LTE to be used for tethering (using the “Smartphone Mobile HotSpot” feature), at no extra cost, for the occasions when broadband may not be convenient or available. If customers hit that high-speed tethering limit, those tethering speeds slow down. If a customer needs more LTE tethering, they can add-on more. Simple.

          However, these violators are going out of their way with all kinds of workarounds to steal more LTE tethered data.

          Since the customer was never sold unlimited tethered data, I don't see what the problem is? It's like going to an all you can eat restaurant and complaining that you can't take your leftovers home.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

            And how could they actually see the difference - forwarded data to PC versus used in the phone? As soon as the data traffic has reached the phone it's up to the phone owner to do whatever he/she want.

            • And how could they actually see the difference - forwarded data to PC versus used in the phone?

              The phone makes the distinction because the phone sets up the tethered access point. Unless the user installs apps to get around this, which is what they did.

              As soon as the data traffic has reached the phone it's up to the phone owner to do whatever he/she want.

              Not if the phone owner wants to abide by the contract they agreed to in their cellular plan. T-Mobile wants to have additional control on tethered data

            • The phone forwards tethered data over a different APN. Simple.
        • 2/GB an hour? If they're going after heavy torrent users, a single movie can clock in at 15-40GB for untouched bluray, which is quite popular these days.
          Supposedly, not that I'd know.

      • Re:You keep using that word. I don't think it mean (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, 2015 @07:30AM (#50425303)

        Common sense says that nothing can be advertised as unlimited, because nothing on Earth is unlimited.

        I'd have sympathy if they were using, say, 20GB a month, which is still a lot for a phone user...but 2 TB? Come on. I'd rather not have my connection slow because people are torrenting with their phone data.

        • Re:You keep using that word. I don't think it mean (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sqr(twg) ( 2126054 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @07:49AM (#50425391)

          Common sense says that nothing can be advertised as unlimited, because nothing on Earth is unlimited.

          No, it doesn't. "Unlimited" has a very well-defined meaning that is obvious for most people. "Unlimited" usage of a 6 Mbit connection means that you can use the full 6 Mbit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (This works out to about 2 TB/mo.)

          Obviously, this is bad for the network, which is why offering an "unlimited" wireless plan is an incredibly stupid idea. But that is what T-mobile did. Blaming their customers for their own mistake and calling them "thieves" is pretty low.

          • Re:You keep using that word. I don't think it mean (Score:5, Informative)

            by JackieBrown ( 987087 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @08:38AM (#50425659)

            Blaming their customers for their own mistake and calling them "thieves" is pretty low.

            You realize that wasn't actually a real quote, right?

            • Read the press release! (Score:2, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward

              You should read the official press release, on the t-mobile site he calls them THIEVES, he says they're STEALING.

              Yeh really.

              http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/stopping-network-abusers.htm

              " who have actually been stealing data from T-Mobile"...."We are going after every thief, "

              2TB is a fucking lie, there's no way you'd get the theoretical bandwidth every second for a month. What he's doing is fucking lying like a scammer to cover his scam. Go on the offensive and attack your own customers in

            • Yes, it was a real quote:
              http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/i... [t-mobile.com]
              "I won't let a few thieves ruin things for anyone else."

              And rightfully so. These people were NEVER SOLD unlimited tethering data. They WERE sold unlimited data for their phones, but not for tethering. They're bypassing tethering limits to get more data for themselves, which reduces the network for everyone else. It's not even victimless.

              Here’s what’s happening: when customers buy our unlimited 4G LTE plan for their smartp

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )

            I would think most users would be entirely happy with "unlimited" simply meaning that any metering of their usage that may occur would not be used to either limit usage, nor to determine how much additional fees to charge them beyond whatever level of service they paid for.

            Any limits that might exist on their usage would be strictly a consequence of whatever the technology is capable of based on how the network is actually being used, not only by them, but by all subscribers at the same moment that they

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by DarkOx ( 621550 )

              That is shitty customer service too though. The network should be available when you want to use it. Its like cable modems were in some neighbor hoods in the early days. If you tried to use one between 6-8pm in some places you might as well have been on dial up. Useless slow. That's been mostly fixed now days with smaller shared segments, faster signalling, and more bandwidth dedicated to data. That is less of an option on last mile and wireless.

              I should be able to depend on being able to drive around

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by mark-t ( 151149 )

                I have no problem with metered usage in general.... I also have no problem with any so-called unlimited plans either, but I'm suggesting that such labelling would only be justified when any such "unlimited" plans are designed such that any metering that may occur on them is strictly for reporting purposes, and does not actually affect what services or levels of service they are entitled to receive, or how much they pay for that service.

                Their services may still be limited by things such as network bandwi

          • What you're describing for "unlimited" is what would be termed in a data center "unmetered". If I buy a 100 Mbit unmetered pipe, I can do exactly as you say, max out the 100 Mbit pipe 24x7 as I please.

            What customers really want, most likely, is something like a "burstable" connection with reasonable limits. Let's say I buy a 100 Mbit "burstable" connection with a 10 Mbit commit. That means I can use up to 100 Mbits at any moment, but if the average is over 10 Mbit I pay more. (It's actually not average, it'

          • "Unlimited" usage of a 6 Mbit connection means that you can use the full 6 Mbit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

            Indeed. And 5GB of tethering means you can use 5GB of tethering, even if you have unlimited LTE on your phone. And that's what T-Mobile sells: Unlimited LTE for your phone, 5GB of LTE tethering for devices that connect to your phone. They don't even really cut you off if you go over that; I've used ~20GB during a move when I had no other options and they didn't slow me until ~18GB. The issue here is that people are bypassing the tethering limits they accepted when they signed up for the service. Those peopl

        • Re:You keep using that word. I don't think it mean (Score:5, Insightful)

          by thsths ( 31372 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @07:59AM (#50425443)

          I agree - especially if tethering is not allowed.

          You can use a few GB if you watch a few movies. You can even use 20 or 100 GB if you tether. But 1TB and more is really not typical *private* internet use any more. If people want to serve websites or torrents, they should not do it on their phone.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            You can even use 20 or 100 GB if you tether. But 1TB and more is really not typical *private* internet use any more.

            HD movies tend to be in the 4-8 GB range if you don't cheat on quality. 200 GB is just 1 person watching HD movies. 2 TB is just 1 person torrenting everything he sees out of some strange (but seemingly common) compulsion.

            If people want to serve websites or torrents, they should not do it on their phone.

            A data plan's a data plan. It's not for you to say what the data is for.

            • Except the contract did say that "data is not data" because it differentiated between data destined to stay on the phone and data just passing through the phone to another device. Data may just be data for some purposes, but for the purpose of being in compliance with a signed T-Mobile contract, it appears that it is not.

          • I agree - especially if tethering is not allowed.

            Tethering and unlimited data are an either/or. Either you can have unlimited data but no tethering, or you can have tethering but with data caps.

            Frankly, I think the latter makes a lot more sense. Tethering is a very useful tool built into every wifi-capable Android phone by default (the carriers disable it). If you have it, it eliminates the need to get a separate cellular data plan for your laptop, tablet, etc, and you're no longer limited to using t

      • you know how that one guy on Jurrassic park says like finds a way? well i think this is exactly what he meant. There are no walls or moats that can stop the consumer from doing what they want to do. We all don't even have to be smart hackers and crackers. Once they make a one push root then its spread from corner of the globe to the next and T-mobile is screwed..

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by markhb ( 11721 )

        Why is this "Informative"? "Insightful" I could understand, but given that it purports to be the "full quote" from Legere but blatantly isn't, in no way is it "Informative".

        I did actually like this actual quote from TFA:

        I’m not sure what they are doing with it – stealing wireless access for their entire business, powering a small cloud service, providing broadband to a small city, mining for bitcoin -- but I really don’t care!

  • Well (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @04:36AM (#50424891) Homepage Journal

    if "inflammable" and "flammable" mean the same thing then why not "limited" and "unlimited"?

  • So it's not unlimited, then... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EthanV2 ( 1211444 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @04:41AM (#50424901) Homepage

    I'm starting to get tired of this mentality from service providers that, just because someone is using their services in ways they didn't expect, they're somehow 'abusing' the service. If you advertise the service as unlimited, it should be unlimited. You shouldn't care that I'm using it to torrent or do whatever.

    If you can't provide a truly unlimited service, don't advertise it

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If the contract explicitly forbids tethering and torrenting, then that's what subscribers are bound by.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        you don't need to tether for torrenting.

        never mind that selling you data is selling you data, not selling you data on the condition that you don't use the data.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          you don't need to tether for torrenting.

          never mind that selling you data is selling you data, not selling you data on the condition that you don't use the data.

          If they make no mentioning of tethering limitations in the agreement you sign up for, then you are correct. But when you have a bundle of conditions in an agreement you can't usually just pick and choose which parts of the agreement you want. Did you know that Google Photo's unlimited storage isn't really unlimited? There is a number of restrictions on what you can and can't do with the "unlimited" storage they are offering. You can't say that you want the unlimited part, but not the restrictions part of th

    • I wonder whether it's actually even being used for tethering at all. Technically, there's no reason you can't just run a torrent app on a phone. My phone has 96GB of storage in it (counting SD card) and can access more than 5TB via LAN when I'm at home; if I *wanted* to use it for torrenting I could (and I'd be tempted to, because My T-Mobile connection is faster than my wired one).

      With that said, wireless bandwidth is a limited resource that needs to be shared across a lot of people. There's a lot of really excellent use cases for it, and massive torrenting is one of them. I'm 100% in agreement with you that they shouldn't call it "unlimited" if they're going to put limits on it (though they'll probably try to weasel that by saying "it's only unlimited for un-tethered data; i.e. that which will be used by the phone directly!" Having good reason to not actually make something unlimited doesn't excuse calling it what it isn't.

      Making the "Umlimited" plan only actually 100GB (before you get throttled like everybody else who goes over their limit; TMoUS never actually kills your data connection) would be pretty reasonable, I think. Throw in an increase to the official tethering cap for such accounts (currently 5GB) so that people who want to use the connection with their PC can do it without relying on hokey apps that try to enable tethering in ways the phone OS and network provider can't tell... well, I'm actually in favor of that! Yes, it'll limit me to approximately 7x as much data as I've ever used in a month, but it'll also keep that network more useful.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rinikusu ( 28164 )

        Well, that's exactly what their contract says; it's not weaseling. My contract says unlimited phone data, with explicit exclusions for tethering. The fact that they let me tether is amazing enough but I do watch my usage when I'm tethered because I'm not a fucking asshole.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ruir ( 2709173 )
      Morally you are right. In practice, I do not see why in the future I have either to see my service slower or pay more because of freeloaders. I understand nowadays with streaming and good quality internet it is quite easy to reach 100-500GB, 2TB seems a bit over the top.

    • They can't even claim that the usage is unexpected. It's been an issue for every wireless data provider using every type of wireless technology ever since the first ISP offered wireless service. I spent 2 years fighting DirecPC back in the late 90s. Didn't get my unlimited service restored but at least the restrictions were explained to new customers.

      The best thing that ever happened to my personal wireless data delivery was Verizon buying a huge chunk 700Mhz spectrum. The FCC slipped a little clause in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GTRacer ( 234395 )
        I had just such a grandfathered contract, and really didn't want to let go of it. But T-Mobile's family pricing TWO YEARS AGO ate Verizon's lunch and it's only gotten better for me, relatively. I am a high-usage customer (98% personal streaming to phone, 2% tethering when on family vacation) and I'm quite pleased with what I bought.

        If I had any real criticism of T-Mo it's that, even in some densely-populated areas, their data and sometimes voice signal sucks eggs.

    • Re:So it's not unlimited, then... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xyrus ( 755017 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @07:26AM (#50425287) Journal

      I'm starting to get tired of this mentality from service providers that, just because someone is using their services in ways they didn't expect, they're somehow 'abusing' the service. If you advertise the service as unlimited, it should be unlimited. You shouldn't care that I'm using it to torrent or do whatever.

      If you can't provide a truly unlimited service, don't advertise it

      I believe that these "unlimited plans" were making the assumption that people aren't assholes. That's a terrible assumption to make.

      Most user's aren't going to run torrents on their phones. In fact, I'm almost certain that type of use case wasn't even considered when they decided on the "unlimited plan" idea. They were probably only looking at the "average" use case with some deviation boundaries. But then along comes the spider that is Joe/Jane Torrent, who blows all usage estimation out of the water and screws over everyone else in an area by using his/her phone as an internet hub.

      Companies should know better by now. Offer an "unlimited" anything and there will always be some part of the population who will use it in ways that will demonstrate just how stupid that idea was.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by l3v1 ( 787564 )
      It's fair to suppose they hate large volume torrenters, but seem to want to cut down on every big user. So, why don't they just limit torrent use and aside from that, leave the plans unlimited for any other use (e.g. constant netflix/hulu/youtube watchers)?

      Anyway, 2TB seems pretty big to me. I'm following about a dozen shows at any given time, and, adding all my other internet activities, I hardly ever reach 100GB a month. I'd have to really think hard to come up with legitimate uses (besides home-run publ

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Right 'we' and the service providers just need to admin reality: Last mile and wireless circuits have limited bandwidth. Its not practical to sell a limited resource at a single flat price. It violates the basic principles of economics.

      I would like to see a single low fixed connection fee and a per megabyte charge, starting from megabyte 1. Just sell it like electricity or water. Every bit you use has a cost, so you have some incentive to minimize use. On the other hand you don't have to sit there go

    • If you can't provide a truly unlimited service, don't advertise it

      They should just adopt a kind of Gabriel Horn's solution to the problem.

      Yes you can upload and download as much as you want 24/7, hence unlimited access, but your bandwidth will be reduced in steps based on transferred data, so that in the end you'd only have a few kbps.

    • I'm starting to get tired of this mentality from service providers that, just because someone is using their services in ways they didn't expect, they're somehow 'abusing' the service. If you advertise the service as unlimited, it should be unlimited. You shouldn't care that I'm using it to torrent or do whatever.

      If you can't provide a truly unlimited service, don't advertise it

      Perhaps you don't think it is abusing the network, but I think it is. It's pretty difficult to use 2TB of data in a single month. These people are obviously using their cell phone data plans in lieu of a home network connection. They didn't pay for WiFi hotspot service. T-Mobile allows people to tether for free. A service for which I am greatly appreciative. But if you want to a cellular itnernet hotspot, buy one of T-Mobile's MiFi style plans. Don't turn your cellular phone + data plan into a MiFi p

    • T-Mobile Unlimited plans work like this:

      * You can use as much data on your cellphone as you want
      * However, there is a limit as to how much data you can use with tethered devices

      To be fair to T-Mobile, they make this really clear in their plans. People then install software to bypass the tethering limit by manipulating the tether to look like data from the cell phone.

      There is nothing sketchy about what T-Mobile is doing here.

  • So much for net neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cloud.pt ( 3412475 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @04:53AM (#50424933)
    So, let me get this straight - an ISP is gonna selectively cut off clients' data plans based on their abuse of: 1. a data cap that from an "unlimited" that is not unlimited, since the user signed a contract that had some sort of fair use policy allowing redefinition of the word "unlimited" by the ISP,for marketing purposes; and 2. Did I read that right about them targeting torrent and p2p users first? Didn't the US just pass a net neutrality law? Isn't protocol-specific "accusing" a type of discrimination punished by law when it concerns American citizens, because it would automatically assume the content these users were trading was illegal without a serious base for such accusation? I mean, seriously. Who gave these corporate douches the power to decide how their service is to be used. It's about time all service providers understand that a user has a right to privacy that goes well beyond his right to sniff on the user's content.

    • 1. a data cap that from an "unlimited" that is not unlimited, since the user signed a contract that had some sort of fair use policy allowing redefinition of the word "unlimited" by the ISP,for marketing purposes;

      I think most (all?) carriers have dropped unlimited data plans. Sprint is the only one I'm not sure about.

      The remaining people with unlimited plans are grandfathered in (I'm one). Legally, the carrier is not required to continue to keep these people on those grandfathered unlimited plans. O

    • Nope. Tethering, which is what is in question here, is not sold as an unlimited service, but as a limited add-on to an unlimited service. Subtle distinction, but important.

  • And if they screw up, good luck getting it fixed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday August 31, 2015 @05:55AM (#50425079)

    I'm with T-Mobile right now. I give them credit for forcing the other carriers to at least pretend to lower the prices on their plans... but it's become apparent to me recently that the way T-Mobile does it is by not training their support personnel *at all*.

    T-Mobile recently announced a plan called "10GB North America". It's 4 lines, each with 10GB of data, for $120. And if you sign up before Labor Day, it's $110 because the 4th line is free. Well, I'm having a dickens of a time getting their reps to figure out that there's no way this should amount to $191/month for our four lines (total bill was $226 or thereabouts, but we have one phone on the installment plan).

    I have a job - I don't have free hours available to teach these bozos how 3rd grade math works. But I'm going to end up having to print everything out, take time off work, and get those printouts into one of their stores to get this fixed because their phone support and their Twitter support are apparently morons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      They will jerk you around forever. T-mobile consistently makes "errors" in billing backed with totally untrained staff that allows the company not be he held liable. You will receive a forever circle jerk from them trying to fix their billing "errors".

        Best way I've found is to write an exact dialogue of the issue and post it in their forum. Be specific about the issue and your attempts to fix it. Normally a moderator will get it fixed, then dump them.

      They are total criminals.

      • They will jerk you around forever. T-mobile consistently makes "errors" in billing backed with totally untrained staff that allows the company not be he held liable. You will receive a forever circle jerk from them trying to fix their billing "errors".

        Big time. It took forever to A.) get them to recognize that I'd returned a Sony Experia, B.) stop billing me for it, and C.) return the money they'd already improperly collected for it. I had the proof that they'd received the returned phone *and* the em
  • Are there added costs to cell providers when people use bandwidth, or is it like cable where once the infrastructure is in place, costs are basically fixed?

    • Technically the latter, but there's only so much bandwidth to go around and in a heavily-populated area there will be a lot of contention for it. Unlike cable, you can't just roll out another trunk line if one of them is getting saturated. Adding more towers may let the phones switch to lower power, reducing interference and allowing more devices to use the same frequencies at once within a city, but adding towers (like rolling out a new line) costs money. Cellular data, like most Internet service, is bille

      • Thank you! That does give their argument a little more credence, but maybe not enough. For one, it seems their assumption is flawed - based on an expectation that doesn't line up with real-world usage. And so far as I know, the FCC hasn't said that QoS is against the rules, and unlike hardlines, there's no set data rate. The problem isn't the total amount of data used per month, it's peak-hours bandwidth consumption.

        AT&T got in trouble for throttling data after reaching a secret limit, which was a

  • This is not about people innocently using a lot of data on an unlimited plan. This is a plan that offers unlimited phone data (and, so far, they really do mean unlimited) and 7 GB of high-speed tethered data. (After that, it's automatically throttled.) People in question are very aware of that 7 GB cap because they are installing special apps to circumvent its enforcement. The apps make tethered data look like phone data. That's not innocent and not OK.

    • Re:Not unlimited, 7 GB (Score:5, Informative)

      by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Monday August 31, 2015 @10:16AM (#50426417)

      This is not about people innocently using a lot of data on an unlimited plan. This is a plan that offers unlimited phone data (and, so far, they really do mean unlimited) and 7 GB of high-speed tethered data. (After that, it's automatically throttled.) People in question are very aware of that 7 GB cap because they are installing special apps to circumvent its enforcement. The apps make tethered data look like phone data. That's not innocent and not OK.

      Like most things in life, the situation is just a little more complicated than that. Personally, I know about the 7GB cap, and I've never hit it - I use tethering basically the way T-Mobile intended - a provisional internet connection when in a place where I need internet access on my laptop, because my phone doesn't cut it.

      One thing worth noting about the difference between 'how laptops use internet' and 'how phones use internet' is that computers will open up TCP connections like they're going out of style, whereas mobile devices are generally optimized to avoid that. The switching gear on the carrier side assumes the latter, not the former. It may not necessarily tax spectrum, but it will tax the networking gear, especially if you're torrenting. "But they should have better infrastructure!" In a perfect world, sure. In the world we presently live in, I do think it's unreasonable to expect them to invest millions of dollars in their infrastructure to address a use case that 1.) affects a very small minority of their users, and 2.) involves violations of their ToS.

      However, "installing special apps to circumvent enforcement" is based on a number of assumptions, that may not be correct. I root my phone - XPrivacy is a must for me, as is 'getting rid of Google and Samsung crap, and CarrierIQ'. Sometimes, I'll install a custom ROM. AOSP-based ROMs can't do Wi-Fi calling because of the kernel; it's a pretty good assumption that carrier-customized kernels are required in order to have the T-Mobile tethering meter running. Even the ones which are based on the carrier kernel tend to have things like CarrierIQ and Knox removed; many have the data cap evasion code built in. Furthermore, T-Mobile's default configuration is not very VPN friendly; one must reconfigure their APNs in order to get many forms of VPN functioning.

      The question that concerns me is whether it is "well-above-average data usage while tethering" that will cause the wrath of Legere, or simply "the absence of data cap enforcement software". If it is truly the latter, then that is concerning. T-Mobile has traditionally been the most mod-friendly carrier. If they're going to change that tune, they will likely disincentivize remaining a customer to the XDA community...and if that comes to pass, it will be interesting to see how the numbers land.

      • it's probably both. they'll turn a blind eye to your technically-a-violation mods (note, this is actually a concern to them of some level; basically every consumer-level service agreement is "service Y in exchange for $X per month and all the personal data we can mine". they just hide the latter part in the fine print.), as long as you don't put a drain on their services. this is how civilization tends to work.

  • T-mobile, unlike many providers, is actually allowing real and true unlimited data usage on phones. They've always had restrictions on tethering in their terms of service. You may or may not like it, but those are the terms you sign up with. If you don't read the full ToS, that's your fault, not theirs. If you want to violate those ToS, you're the one breaking the agreed-upon deal. Don't be surprised if they say you're not abiding by the agreement and act accordingly. I'm a heavy tethering user. I'm also u

  • I have had an unlimited data plan on T-Mobile since May of this year (I called in advance of an upcoming conference and they said it would be about the same price for unlimited as the upgrade I wanted).

    SO I get to the conference, and I'm streaming video and so forth and a few days later tethering stops working. Data on the phone works fine, I just can't tether... Then I get on a message on the phone that I've hit a 5GB tethering cap.

    I call them up saying I'm at a conference and I really need more tetheri

  • If I'm operating over an encrypted connection (like https) how can they determine of the endpoint is the phone or a laptop?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dlgeek ( 1065796 )
      Unrooted phones will route tethered traffic through a different gateway. It's part of the APN settings.

  • I thought T-mobile already throttled data on their unlimited plans once you downloaded a certain amount. Are the 2TB-ers are being throttled? If not, why not. If so, T-mobile should just add another tier of throttling above the one they already have.

  • How can they assume they could use "unlimited" what is sold to them as "unlimited"? What cheek!

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