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T-Mobile To Increase Deprioritization Threshold To 50GB This Week (tmonews.com) 67

Posted by BeauHD from the ripple-effect dept.
After raising its deprioritization threshold to 32GB in May, it looks like T-Mobile will bump it up to 50GB on September 20th, according to a TmoNews source. The move will widen the gap between T-Mobile and its competition. For comparison, Sprint's deprioritization threshold is currently 23GB, while AT&T and Verizon's are both 22GB. TmoNews reports: It's said that this 50GB threshold won't change every quarter and no longer involves a specific percentage of data users. As with the current 32GB threshold, customers that exceed this new 50GB deprioritization threshold in a single month may experience reduced speeds in areas where the network is congested. T-Mobile hasn't issued an announcement regarding this news, but the official @TMobileHelp account recently tweeted "Starting 9/20, the limit will be increased!" in response to a question about this news.
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T-Mobile To Increase Deprioritization Threshold To 50GB This Week More

T-Mobile To Increase Deprioritization Threshold To 50GB This Week

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  • Now if only (Score:4, Informative)

    by jordanjay29 ( 1298951 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2017 @12:52AM (#55223797)
    I could get a data connection when I'm outside of a big city or major thoroughfare. Rural areas are still T-Mobile's weak zones, and it's something I wish they'd focus a bit more of their efforts on. It's well established that if you want full coverage everywhere, the only choice is Verizon, but if T-Mobile were to actively work on solidifying their coverage they could change that perception and really have some ground to stand on as a competitor.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      those rural areas is the only thing keeping verizon in the wireless business. i miss alltel; that's where verizon's huge rural network came from, but when they bought 'em, they threw out alltel's better customer service and better, cheaper alltel service plans.

    • I'm in a major city and there is something wrong with the TMobile tower near my grocery store.

      It shows as functioning correctly but my current and prior phones never connect to it. Even when I'm only a half block away from ti. So my phone is connecting to towers much further away as a result. I've reported it twice now and nothings been done.

    • I could get a data connection when I'm outside of a big city or major thoroughfare. Rural areas are still T-Mobile's weak zones, and it's something I wish they'd focus a bit more of their efforts on. It's well established that if you want full coverage everywhere, the only choice is Verizon, but if T-Mobile were to actively work on solidifying their coverage they could change that perception and really have some ground to stand on as a competitor.

      Probably a feature the advertisers don't care about. Seems that most of that free data you are getting is just getting gobbled up by all of the important ads you are "served".

    • Personally, I'm the exact opposite. I specifically picked my provider because they give me unlimited usage in the city and then charge me by the minute/message/KB when I'm outside of the city. It works out much cheaper for me in the end because I almost never leave the city, and when I do, I don't use my phone for extended periods of time. Music and maps can all be stored on the phone, so I actually find very little reason to connect to the internet between cities.

      People who really want high speed and plent

    • I've been on multiple road trips alll around America, including all kinds of western/Midwest states... T-mobile gas gotten way better, especially over the last two years. Wyoming was the only state I had any issues really, and that was because it's roaming and it wouldn't always use data from that carrier even though it should have been.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Karlt1 ( 231423 )

      but if T-Mobile were to actively work on solidifying their coverage they could change that perception and really have some ground to stand on as a competitor.

      Serving highly populated areas cheaply is T-Mobile's competitive advantage. Building out infrastructure in rural areas where they would have to spread the fixed cost among fewer people would cause them to raise rates. They compete on price. Verizon competes on coverage.

    • I think that T-Mobile recently started building out new infrastructure, using a lower frequency (600 MHz). This makes support of less dense areas cheaper. However, none of their current phones support it.
      https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/... [t-mobile.com]

  • Argh. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2017 @01:43AM (#55223911)

    I don't want to use 50GB of mobile data a month.

    What I want is to make phone calls where the other person can hear me and vice versa, and use a few hundred megabytes of tethering per month without paying an arm and a leg.

    Project Fi gives me the latter but not the former...

    • Re: Argh. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      T-Mobile One includes unlimited 3G tethering.

      • Is their "unlimited 3g tethering" actually at 3g speeds or more like 2g/edge? I will be travelling to the US and need a month of internet.

        • When I've been overseas the 3G tethering was decently fast, certainly not edge speeds. Also T-Mobile had the option to pay some amount for higher speeds... the last two times I was abroad they had free higher speed roaming and then it was real LTE.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • 3g (at least in Europe) meant 2mbit and up. Edge was 256kbit/s.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

              • Thanks. That was exactly what i suspected that their throttled 3g is not the same speed i get when i switch 4g/lte off on my iphone (which is pretty usable). I get up to 4 mbit/s on 3g.

                But at least in Europe (gsm), we used edge before anyone was even talking about 3g. And i know that from time to time i still get both logos on my iphone information bar when i go into the woods - and while internet is totally snappy with 3g logo, its near unusable when EDGE is displayed.

    • Re: Argh. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by shitzu ( 931108 )

      What do you do with few hundred megabytes of *tethering*? Any computer with a modern OS will consume that in the first nanosecond of discovering an internet connection is available.

    • I don't want to use 50GB of mobile data a month.

      What I want is to make phone calls where the other person can hear me and vice versa, and use a few hundred megabytes of tethering per month without paying an arm and a leg.

      Project Fi gives me the latter but not the former...

      Sorry, but the advertisers need those 50 GByte to tell you about their wonderful products and services.

  • Warning to anyone in Florida considering a switch to T-mobile: their data network is nowhere CLOSE to having the robustness of Verizon and AT&T. Ask your friends & coworkers... they'll confirm it.

    For the past week, T-mobile has had large-scale data outages across Florida that were MUCH more widespread and longer-lasting than Verizon's and AT&T's.

    Simply put, T-mobile (like Sprint) uses cheaper, unreliable backhaul providers (like Comcast) for ALL data backhaul. Verizon and AT&T have real T-3

    • Re: No data service in most of South Florida (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      TMobile has fiber at damn near every tower. Backhaul wasn't the problem, power was.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Real T-3 Lines...

      Catchpa: Antiques

      • Ok, make that "DS-3". The point is, AT&A and Verizon use backhaul that comes with aggressive SLAs, backed up with escalating fines & liquidated damages whenever there's an outage. T-mo & Sprint generally don't (at least, not for non-voice/sms traffic).

        If your business has a DS-1& it goes down for 4+ hours, the telco ITSELF is going to start getting hit with HUGE hourly fines and automatically owe pre-negotiated liquidated damages unless it can convince the FCC and courts it followed their re

        • Ok, make that "DS-3".

          So you are saying that their backhaul into their cell towers is 45Mbps. That is, less than a single phone can achieve today?

          I think you are talking out of your ass.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Funny. Neighbor used my TMobile phone the day after the hurricane to call family because his Verizon phone didn't work.
      No power in county at the time.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Either you got extremely lucky & haven't left your house in 2 weeks, don't use lots of mobile data,
          or we have quite different opinions about what's included in the definition of "South Florida" (my definition includes coastal-urban Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Collier, and Lee counties, plus the upper keys north of Islamorada... the middle & lower keys are another matter entirely).

    • Wow! Real T-3 lines? What is this, 2003?

  • Deprioritization (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nighttime ( 231023 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2017 @02:38AM (#55224021) Homepage Journal

    For those wondering what the term means:

    "customers who use more than xxGB of data in a single billing cycle will have their data usage prioritized below other customers for the remainder of that billing cycle.
    "When your data usage is deprioritized, you may see slower data speeds when you’re at a location where the network is congested. If you move away from this area to a less congested spot or if the location becomes less congested, your data speeds should return to normal."

    Source: http://www.tmonews.com/2017/05... [tmonews.com]

    • Honestly that is far more reasonable than what the big three were doing previously to throttling (cutting off Unlimited customers for using "too much" data or switching them from unlimited to metered plans).

      • Yes. There's nothing like waking up in the morning and realizing that you accidentally left WiFi turned off, and it's spent the night uploading your entire 12GB of photos and video to the cloud over LTE.

  • I misread the title and thought it said, "T-Mobile to Increase Deportation Threshold to 50B This Week" and wondered how on earth T-Mobile got to determine how many illegal immigrants or their children the country deported. That was really weird, until I read more closely.

  • Thank god there was no merger with Sprint. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    To think that Sprint was promising there'd be improved competition by merging with T-Mobile. Sprint is barely keeping ahead of the big two in terms of bandwidth allocation.

    But it seems T-Mobile's increase may force Sprint to up theirs since both are the low-budget carriers. AT&T and Verizon follow suit to avoid losing subscribers in cities.

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