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.
Reply 14 comments

Lousy press coverage (Score: 2, Insightful)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-09-02 20:42 (#K8C4)

For once, CNN deserves some credit. They were the only source I could find that wasn't incredibly biased and doubling-down on T-Mobile's side, ranting about these evil hackers who are supposedly stealing service.

The NYT blog at least mentioned that 'unlimited' is supposed to mean something. Once T-Mobile goes after this group of excessive users, what's to stop them from lowering the bar and going after more folks using less, until they've successfully kicked all their less-profitable customers?

Better Plan Naming (Score: 2, Insightful)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2015-09-02 23:00 (#K8Q8)

They should just stop calling their plans "Unlimited" and most of the confusion would disappear. If a dairy farmer sold you a "gallon" jug of milk but only put 3 quarts of milk in it, the FDA would rightly complain against the incorrect labeling. Likewise, if an ISP sells you an "unlimited" connection but then artificially limits your speed after certain defined caps, the FCC is justified by complaining about the incorrect labeling.

Re: Better Plan Naming (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-03 01:33 (#K90V)

I think this is fine as is. On the plans page, it clearly says "on-smartphone only" right below "unlimited" in a readable size. There's also no absurd fees. I'll hate on how AT&T and Verizon handled this all day, but this seems reasonable.

Re: Better Plan Naming (Score: 3, Insightful)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2015-09-04 17:13 (#KEZF)

Yeah, I don't know. They're trying to place limitations where it doesn't technically make sense to put limitations. Its like trying to separate salt water from fresh water at a river intersecting an ocean.

I understand the business case of why Tmobile is trying to separate out Smartphone data from every other kind of data, but it seems kind of silly. Data is data. It can be routed from one device to anther fairly easily.

It would be easier and technically better to just call all data: data and put a cap on it. Make it something absurd like 100 gig. 100 is much bigger than 10 gig and you really don't affect that many people. Tether if you want to or don't

Australia went through this (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-03 15:52 (#KB57)

The telcos were kicked in the nuts and told to take down what amounted to false advertising. In our case it was for broadband, but the same theory applies. They also tried the insane 'you can't tether on mobile' plans here, which is easily sidestepped by using a VPN.

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

by entropy@pipedot.org on 2015-09-04 22:28 (#KFR9)

Data limits on cellular phones is a fantasy just like per-TXT and per-MMS charges were. They are holding onto it, and people hate it...but unlimited data is what customers demand. Idiocy like some guy using 2TB is not going to dissuade me from the obvious point that they whine about people using over 2GB and want to charge incredibly high rates per GB.

Re: Maybe they can crack down on high text message users next... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-05 05:39 (#KGCZ)

2TB?!? On mobile?!? In Aus you get around 2GB, maybe 6GB if you pay. Wow. Just wow.

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.

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

by entropy@pipedot.org on 2015-09-05 21:48 (#KJ4W)

It's probably some employee they paid to do it.

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

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-09-05 09:41 (#KGSE)

Data limits on cellular phones is a fantasy just like per-TXT and per-MMS charges were. They are holding onto it, and people hate it...but unlimited data is what customers demand.
I don't demand unlimited cellular data... not at all. I can spend most of my time on WiFi and use hardly any cellular data. Instead, I would much rather have lower monthly fees. I know I'm not alone, as many MVNOs (like Republic Wireless) that offer a cheap plan with no data allowance, find those plans overwhelmingly popular with their customers... I, however, would like to have some small amount of cellular data to use.

Back when plans charged fees per-SMS (text message), I just didn't send many of those. I recently switched from a plan with free MMS to one that charges, so I just don't use MMS anymore. Now that it's all about data, I'm happy to cash-in on cheap cell plans with unlimited talk/text/etc., and just be careful to keep my cellular data usage extremely low.

Pay-per-SMS plans were ridiculous, because they were nearly free to the telco. But it makes perfect sense that data usage dominates the costs of current cellular providers, and it is inherently a constrained resource that needs to be limited.

Re: Maybe they can crack down on high text message users next... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-06 14:37 (#KKS8)

But... but... Telstra claimed SMS messages were costing them a fortune and that 20c an SMS is cheap. They would not lie to us! Ever! Right?

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

by wootery@pipedot.org on 2015-09-06 15:29 (#KKW8)

Pay-per-SMS plans were ridiculous, because they were nearly free to the telco. But it makes perfect sense that data usage dominates the costs of current cellular providers, and it is inherently a constrained resource that needs to be limited.
Careful not to ignore the other side of the story here: it's not just about bandwidth contention.

Telcos have to build and maintain the infrastructure in the first place. Crazy example time: if the government banned phone-calls and mobile-data, SMS would still be 'nearly free' in the sense you use it, but the telcos would still have to recover their infrastrucure costs, so they wouldn't be able to sell SMS-only packages for super cheap.

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

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-09-06 15:41 (#KKXA)

The cell networks would be designed very differently, and much less expensive to deploy and maintain, if they only needed SMS. Look at trusty old alphanumeric pagers for an example. They wouldn't be able to offer all their service for free, but awfully cheap. Without all the other services, their billing and support costs would be vastly lower, bandwidth needs vastly lower, etc. They could make it a very, very inexpensive service.

Re: Maybe they can crack down on high text message users next... (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-06 22:45 (#KMPV)

Telstra was given millions to implement the Australian internet backbone but instead just wasted the money and milked the public on dialup and businesses for ISDN. When DSL came along they dragged their feet until forced to get their act in gear. Asshats.