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Communications United States

T-Mobile is Making Its 'Unlimited' Data Plan Even More Confusing (theverge.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the unlimited-plan dept.
When T-Mobile announced "One" plan, little did the company know that people wouldn't like seeing their "unlimited" data plan offer video streaming max out at 480p resolution. The company is making some tweaks to that plan, only to make things more confusing to people. It will now begin selling "HD day passes" for $3 per day, allowing customers to stream in 1080p for 24 hours. The Verge reports: That's simple enough, but here's where it gets really weird: T-Mobile is also offering a plan called T-Mobile One Plus, which, among other benefits, offers unlimited HD day passes. So by subscribing to the plan, you can stream 1080p video all you want every single day -- but only if you go and activate the HD day pass again every single day. Presumably, T-Mobile is hoping you'll forget to activate those passes, or else it would have just lifted the 480p quality limit without this bizarre constraint. Making this even more confusing, T-Mobile originally announced plans to offer an "HD add-on" for the One plan that offered unlimited HD streaming without constraints. That's no longer going to be an option, however, so if you want HD video streaming, you're stuck re-enabling it every day. A T-Mobile rep framed the change as "giving customers more" for the same price, which is true (both cost $25 extra per month), but the new plan also involves the strange new reactivation hurdle.
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T-Mobile is Making Its 'Unlimited' Data Plan Even More Confusing More

T-Mobile is Making Its 'Unlimited' Data Plan Even More Confusing

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  • So now I will have to get T-Mobile One Plus on my OnePlus One on T-Mobile? (just kidding, I have Ting who uses T-Mobile's network)

  • HD-Traffic vs. SD-Traffic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by burni2 ( 1643061 ) on Monday August 29, 2016 @03:18PM (#52791677)

    How can T-Mobile differentiate between these,
    as far as I know the connection to youtube is cryptographically secured.

    So one could be guessing by the data rate and the duration, but with browsers using buffering that would be complicated.

    However I would tunnel the traffic through my trusty unlimited broadband at home or my root server, using ssh.

    So T-Mobile ain't see nothing yet !?

    • it's not when you're connecting to a binge on partner

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by burni2 ( 1643061 )

        So you are saying that if I want to access a streaming service over t-mobile I will do that without encryption?

        How can t-mobile enforce for example your phone not to encrypt the connection?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cdrudge ( 68377 )

          There are multiple ways [t-mobile.com] that a provider can setup their stream to qualify for Binge On zero rating of data. Having your application request a video from a particular server/IP/net block may be sufficient if the provider and T-mobile have agreed to the setup.

    • Re:HD-Traffic vs. SD-Traffic (Score:5, Interesting)

      by markus ( 2264 ) on Monday August 29, 2016 @03:38PM (#52791813) Homepage

      How can T-Mobile differentiate between these, as far as I know the connection to youtube is cryptographically secured.

      Even with TLS encrypted HTTPS connections, you can see the domain name of the request. If it says youtube.com, T-Mobile can rate limit the connection to something much slower than what it usually would give you. And the rate limiting forces YouTube to downgrade the video resolution.

      So, it's not T-Mobile that selects the lower video resolution, it's YouTube. All T-Mobile does is provide differential network performance based on service; of course, that sounds suspiciously close to a violation of network neutrality. But that's a question for the FCC to decide.

      I suspect the reason why this originally didn't work for YouTube, when T-Mobile first starting rolling out BingeOn is the fact that Google is increasingly using HTTP/2.0 which supports multiple streams in a single connection, and it also is often using QUIC which fundamentally looks very different to a HTTP connection over TCP.

    • Re:HD-Traffic vs. SD-Traffic (Score:5, Informative)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Monday August 29, 2016 @03:40PM (#52791829)

      How can T-Mobile differentiate between these,
      as far as I know the connection to youtube is cryptographically secured.

      TMobile addressed this in their technical notes: https://www.t-mobile.com/conte... [t-mobile.com]

      This requires that video detection signatures be present. T-Mobile will work with content providers to ensure that our networks work together to properly detect video. We will continue to work with content providers as new traffic identification means are needed in the event of future technology enhancement or changes. Use of technology protocols which make detection of video difficult such as https and UDP require additional collaboration with TMobile to enable the video detection.

      Presumably you have to work hand-in-hand with TMobile developers to make sure your streams are recognized. I haven't found the technical truth. There was an interesting academic paper: http://david.choffnes.com/pubs... [choffnes.com], also outlined here: http://dd.meddle.mobi/bingeon.... [meddle.mobi]

      How does BingeOn classify traffic? Our prior differentiation work suggested that DPI devices classify applications using regular expression matches on certain
      fields of HTTP requests and responses, and SNI fields in TLS handshakes

    • A lot of video services adapt the bitstream they send based on available bandwidth. So I would guess that if T-Mobile thinks your TCP connection looks like video, they cap it at some 480p-plausible bit rate.

    • I think what they are saying is they are going to screw with your latency and data rate such that an HD movie will stutter and an SD will play.

      Basically, they are going to give you unlimited bandwidth in the same sense that a station wagon full of dvds is unlimited bandwidth. Yes there's a very very long latency but when the wagon arrives the delta function is so large that if occupies the entire spectrum. Voila unlimited data with unlimited bandwidth, very high latentcy

    • I have a home plex server and they used to throttle video from that. Had to turn off Binge On.
    • Disable IPv6 in your APN settings. It's TMo's servers that are routing your request, and the IPv4 servers aren't playing man-in-the-middle yet.

  • Unlimited **1 (Score:5, Funny)

    by HumanWiki ( 4493803 ) on Monday August 29, 2016 @03:19PM (#52791679)

    **1 -- Not applicable to all plans. Void where prohibited. See merchant for more details. Days that end in Y are excluded. Mobile data restrictions apply. The party of the first part is not beholden to the party of the second part, but is otherwise beholden themselves to the third. Prior approval is required for data entitlement. Data packets larger than 100bytes subject to fee.

  • I usually have this thought whenever I think about my cell phone plan, but man, I'm really glad I don't have T-Mobile!
    -------------
    "We believe carrier pigeons could vastly boost the speed and reliability of our network." -- T-Moblie

  • ... I doubt any of the cell phone leading providers would escape long prison sentences. If I didn't have to have a cell phone for employment, I wouldn't own one.

  • New App (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How long until someone writes a $0.99 app that automatically enables HD on a daily basis.

  • But I sure wouldn't switch to T-Mobile now if I wasn't. Used to be, mediocre coverage, great, affordable plans. Now it's Binge-on, T-Mobile Tuesdays, goofy plans...you can only paper over your poor coverage with gimmicks for so long before you have to build your network out. If they ever cancel my Grandfathered plan, it's MVNO all the way for me.

  • Use the Tmobile Music Unlimited prepaid plan (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Monday August 29, 2016 @03:49PM (#52791899)

    It's $50 ($55 with tax).

    I get unlimited music and 1 gig of data.

    Recently right as the month ends I'm hitting 900mb (and that's with youtube videos).

    They tried to upsell me to the post paid plan.

    It was $70 ($77 with tax). And otherwise the same plan.

    I looked at the salesperson and explained my plan again.

    She went, "oh.. right" and stopped.

    Do you have a great plan to recommend? I'd love to hear it. Every month, I have the option of changing plans or even services. I love it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Daetrin ( 576516 )
      I'm on the T-Mobile pay-as-you-go plan. $30 a month ($30 period, no extra taxes) for "unlimited" data (throttled after 5GB per month), unlimited texts, and 100 minutes per month.

      In the three years i've been using the plan i've gone over the 100 minutes once when i was on a business trip. Ended up spending about $30 extra that month (i believe the extra rate is 10 cents/minute.)

      I may have gone over the 5GB data limit a couple times near the end of the month, but either it was a short enough period or the

      • I'm in the same plan, it has binge-on and music streaming. I don't watch video on my phone but I do use audio a lot. I buy refills with my target redcard, which gives 5% off and no sales tax. I do talk a bit, but Google voice or Vonage takes care of that.

        Cell service, to me, isn't worth much more than $1/day.

    • I thought the postpaid $50 plan is 2 GB + 480p video and free music. I'm on the family plan, which now is 4 phones at 6 GB of data and roll over (and all the usual 480p video, international roaming, etc), for $120. Except when we signed up, we got 10GB/month/phone. But only one of us ever makes it to 6 GB. The nice thing about Simple Choice is that you get to tether the data, which is great when traveling. That's why the new Tmobile 1 plans look so poor: you pay more, and get more data than you need, a

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 29, 2016 @03:50PM (#52791909)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • without which towers are likely to get clogged pretty quickly.

      Citation needed. Data caps haven't been about network congestion for years. They're purely a money making ploy.

      • For cellular data caps are about network congestion. For terrestrial Internet, congestion can be solved if the provider is willing to throw more money at it. But for cellular, the options for building more capacity for the last mile is building more towers and making each tower less powerful so it serves a smaller area.

        There are two problems with that. It takes years sometimes for municipalities and neighborhoods to approve a tower being built and even if you do have more towers, if you are in a heavily pop

        • This argument reminds me of having to explain to junior developers why they don't need to use a binary search on an array size of 10.

          Everything you have just said is correct, but none of it proves that data caps are actually necessary to combat congestion. In your theoretical example of an oversubscribed tower, limiting city users to the same arbitrary number of bytes as a rural user with a tower to themselves most of the day does nothing to help. It does make the carrier a lot of money, though.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Karlt1 ( 231423 )

            The grandparent post I replied to mentioned "towers getting congested". The parent I replied to mentioned "data caps not being necessary". My explanation was regarding *towers getting congested* so the two things were conflated.

            So to be more clear, T-mobile in particular is getting rid of data caps and they are depriotitizing heavy users when towers are congested. Meaning in your example, the rural user would get the full speed, and the user that was under 26Gb would be prioritized over the user who had gon

            • So to be more clear, T-mobile in particular is getting rid of data caps and they are depriotitizing heavy users when towers are congested.

              I'll believe that when I see it. I've never gone over my T-Mobile data cap, but family members on my plan have, and they can tell the moment it happens, regardless of whether or not they're in a congested area: immediate drop to sub-Edge speeds until the end of the billing cycle.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Karlt1 ( 231423 )

                I think you're still confusing two different things.

                As of today, T-mobile has plans that explicitly have data caps with a certain amount of "high speed data" and unlimited plans. If you have a plan with data caps you will always be "throttled" to 2G speeds after you go over your high speed allotment. If you have an unlimited plan your data will be "depriotitized" after you over 26Gb. I've never noticed a slow down once I go over the 26Gb.

                Currently, T-mobile also has "Binge On" if you are watching video from

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Binge-on isn't a data cap, it's a bandwidth limiter.

          Except there still is a cap. Read the fine print. Past certain usage all your data is throttled.

          If you think that 10+ phones using DASH, RTSP, etc, to try to stream an HD video (5Mbps+) out of a single 50Mbps LTE tower, isn't going to cause severe problems for everyone else using that tower, then you have a strange understanding of network protocols and video protocols in particular.

          Granting your argument for the moment, artificially limiting bandwidth to

  • The biggest part of this news for me is the new T-Mobile One Plus plan which gives you unlimited tethering for $95. I have the original unlimited plan which has 7 gigs of tethering for $80. This may be enough for me to switch plans. The only thing I'm not sure about is the it says the tethering is "non-prioritized" LTE. Was tethering always non-prioritized or should I be expecting slower speeds?

    • There is a difference between being "deprioritized" and "throttled". Throttling involves placing a hard limit on the speed of data transmission. Deprioritzation means if traffic is heavy in your location, other people who haven't reached the threshold will get more bandwidth allocated to them than you do.

  • This whole thing is playing havoc with its (relative) coolness reputation.

  • This should be ILLEGAL. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fish_in_the_c ( 577259 ) on Monday August 29, 2016 @04:32PM (#52792229)

    My basic take it is this. No one especially a data carrier should have any right to inspect packets I PAY to transmit any more then they have the right to randomly search my car without legal cause and search warrant. It should and needs to be ILLEGAL for any data provided to in anyway inspect or log traffic contents or destinations unless it is for purposes of debugging a problem. If they want to meter the amount of data fine, make it clear in the contract, they have no more business knowing what I send and receive then the electric company who powers the routers. Sorry that doesn't allow carries to milk their current networks for every last penny they can stick it to people for , but customers have a right to privacy that includes not having a corporate hack decide which data I'm worthy to receive and what rates, we agree, I pay, end of story. All this traffic inspection is violation of basic privacy and as a society and as consumers we should vehemently oppose it. Perhaps apple and Google should start enabling router based TOR by default on their phones. Sad that it has to come to that, because tor is a bandwidth hog but if carriers aren't going to treat people right that is what everyone should start doing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      No one especially a data carrier should have any right to inspect packets I PAY to transmit any more then they have the right to randomly search my car without legal cause and search warrant.

      You're voluntarily entering into a agreement with a private company. YOU are giving them that right when you sign the agreement.

      if they want to meter the amount of data fine, make it clear in the contract

      They do.

      they have no more business knowing what I send and receive

      They don't necessarily know or care what you're se

      • >>You're voluntarily entering into a agreement with a private company. YOU are giving them that right when you sign the agreement.
        True, however it is not possible to get needed services from any company that doesn't snoop on your data because of a combination of anti-competitive monopolistic collusion shored up by government bureaucracy. You could say the same thing about your bank, by having a bank account you agree to having all your personal business monitored and if you look suspicious your recor

  • Is probably much more in the realm of "it's going to take us x time to code this thing to check for the pass subscription with each attempt and it will bog down the network y amount to make that check every time the user tries to load a video but it will only z time to stick the check in the calls which already talk to the server specifically to handle the passes" than it is "some nefarious marketing and sales shit which doesn't make any sense and will only piss people off."

  • And so far intend to stay that way.

    I don't get throttled. Ever.

    I don't get rate limited. I get HD video all I want, so far.

    I've only gone over 13GB/month once, but no impacts.

    I need to add a line soon, but it won't be these. I'm not ready to sacrifice functionality (video quality) for cost, at least not this formula.

  • Write an angry letter / email / facebook / tweeet and vent your outrage at your congresscritter. Tell them T-Mobile is a sneaky sneak being a sneak!

    Oh snap, they're bought and paid for! They won't listen. They don't give a rat's ass.

    Jump ship. Maybe if enough people dump T-Mobile, they'll get the message.

    Oh snap, you're just a grain of sand in a big beach!

    • Unless you intend to give up on cell service entirely, all you are doing is trading one devil for another. Even an MVNO like straight talk isn't an option, since part of your monthly fee is going into the pockets of one of the big 4 to cover tower usage.

  • i mean it there prices keep going up for the same data packets.

  • https://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    how are any of these data plans even legal?

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/net... [whitehouse.gov]

  • Dear Valued T-Mobile Customer,

    Please pay for this service, but don't use it. Seriously, our infrastructure can't support it and we simply can't afford to upgrade. You have no idea of the pressure we're under. I mean we have shareholders to think about, and a stock price to manipulate. Frankly, your data service is the least of our concerns. So, enjoy your unlimited* data, but just... don't use it. Please. Pretend it's not there...

    ...but... y'know... be cool. Keep paying for it. Shareholders, etc. You know h

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