T-Mobile cracks down on unauthorized tethering on "unlimited" data plans

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in mobile on (#K8AY)
In an open letter to T-Mobile customers with an unusually furious tone, CEO John Legere announced an immediate crackdown on 3,000 users engaging in unauthorized tethering on "unlimited 4G LTE" data plans, calling the practice "stealing data". He claims the affected users are "hacking" and "using workarounds to conceal their tethering usage" to circumvent the 7 GB cap on tethered ("Mobile HotSpot") data, allowing them to use as much as 2 terabytes of data in a month, and this behavior "could eventually have a negative effect" on other T-Mobile customers. "Customers who continue to do this will be warned, then lose access to our Unlimited 4G LTE smartphone data plan, and be moved to an entry-level limited 4G LTE data plan."

Legere is walking a fine line, because the FCC has been very clear that "unlimited means unlimited." FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said in June, "The Commission is committed to holding accountable those broadband providers who fail to be fully transparent about data limits." The commission fined AT&T $100 million for misleading mobile customers about its "unlimited" data plans, throttling data speeds after customers hit a certain data cap. Tracfone also got hit with a $40 million in January for falsely advertising its unlimited plan. Verizon had to abandoned plans to slow down 4G connection speeds for unlimited data plan customers after FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler openly called the plan "disturbing." The FCC issued a similar notice to T-Mobile last year, which improved its notifications when it throttles unlimited plan customers.

Re: Maybe they can crack down on high text message users next... (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-09-05 09:52 (#KGT0)

Yes, 2TB on mobile. John Legere should send the guy a cake or something as a "Thank You" present, because that one single extreme case makes him able to claim he's not the bad guy here. For all we know, the other 2,999 users he plans to ban might only be using 8GB of data every month. He didn't bother to get into specifics about the rest of them. And even if they are all far over the limits, these are just the ones he's "starting with", so sooner or later, he'll get to those users, too.
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