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T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

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Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#51

Post by icebraining »

emidln wrote: post #35
codemac wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My inability to "script" my phone is really starting to hinder my hacker-ness. This seems like something you could build into your phone. Every day when you first interact with your phone, have tasker or something else fire off a job that auto-enables your unlimited hd day passes. Does anyone have good introduction documentation to either: writing scripts for tasker, or writing your own android applications when you…

Scripting Layer 4 Android provides a reasonable facade for a lot of APIs that are available to a ton of languages via a socket. It has out of the box support for perl and python as well as some other languages. [1] https://github.com/damonkohler/sl4a

And you can use Tasker to launch a sl4a action every day, or when you connect to a certain network, etc.

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#52

Post by gxs »

jesusshreds wrote: post #25
drbawb wrote: post #6

I'm a little saddened to see the direction T-Mobile is headed with their plans. When I switched to Project Fi last year my T-Mobile unlimited plan was $70/mo. That included actual HD video, and LTE tethering. Now the equivalent plan (T-Mobile One+) is $90/mo, and that just gets you "unlimited HD day passes" which you have to remember to toggle every day if you want video that isn't 480p. What's even scarier to me is…

I'll just leave this here: https://boingboing.net/2016/09/22/i-have-found-a-secret-tunn...

I hope this doesn't mean the end for Calyx.

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#53

Post by jlarocco »

huehehue wrote: post #46
icelancer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Thanks for this. How are the speeds in major cities?

"[...] 4G/LTE bandwidth on Sprint's network." Sprint claims an average of 3-6 Mbps[1] [1] https://shop2.sprint.com/en/stores/popups/4G_coverage_popup....

I wouldn't trust that page.

I checked my apartment and it's shown solidly inside a 4G LTE coverage area. In reality, I'm lucky to get 2 bars of 3G, and I avoid talking on the phone because it'll drop the call.

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#54

Post by rifung »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #43
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, almost everyone got rid of unlimited, and had fair, net neutral data tiers. And then T-Mobile's deceptive marketing led everyone to follow suit. I understand that as a 16 year user, you're inclined to defend them, but this whole current trend was T-Mobile's idea. T-Mobile started zero rating certain types of apps, throttling people's video traffic, etc. "Uncarrier" is a whole new field of net neutrality vio…

I don't believe in net neutrality on wireless spectrum. Not all bits are created equally. If you don't like the policy, there are at least three other national carriers to choose from. I'm exhausted from a vocal minority thinking their opinion matters in this regard. The market has spoken, and does not care.

Sorry since I know you're exhausted already but can you share why you think not all bits are created equally?

I always thought it was bizarre how companies charge for tethering, especially after data caps were introduced. Aren't they all the same to the carrier?

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#55

Post by linkregister »

codemac wrote: post #22
drbawb wrote: post #6

I'm a little saddened to see the direction T-Mobile is headed with their plans. When I switched to Project Fi last year my T-Mobile unlimited plan was $70/mo. That included actual HD video, and LTE tethering. Now the equivalent plan (T-Mobile One+) is $90/mo, and that just gets you "unlimited HD day passes" which you have to remember to toggle every day if you want video that isn't 480p. What's even scarier to me is…

My inability to "script" my phone is really starting to hinder my hacker-ness. This seems like something you could build into your phone. Every day when you first interact with your phone, have tasker or something else fire off a job that auto-enables your unlimited hd day passes. Does anyone have good introduction documentation to either: writing scripts for tasker, or writing your own android applications when you…

Microsoft recently dropped support for Onyx (https://onx.ms), a scripting app allowing developers to write Javascript for a simplified Android API.

This doesn't help you; I just wanted to whine about another great service being shut down.

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#56

Post by bdavisx »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #33
bdavisx wrote: post #4

It's great that the FCC does this for cell carriers, but they still are letting the data caps apply on home connections, which is going to do nothing except increase profits and decrease innovation.

This is completely false. If you look at how businesses generally work, they're trying to get a certain amount of revenue in order to balance their budget and make a profit. Then they decide how to get it. Data caps are fantastic . Because it means when they're raising their prices, they're charging the users who most use it, rather than just raising the price for everyone. If you're being asked to pay for overage on…

You could say that, or you could say that the cap is stopping me from actually using the bandwidth I pay for. I pay for 100Mb/sec down, how long would it take me to hit the cap if I used that continuously? So do I really have the 100Mb/sec down that I'm paying for?

And as a side note, I've never hit the cap - I'm not sure it's turned on yet (Comcast customer), but it's coming. But I won't have one soon because I'll be switching to a different ISP as soon as it's available. But if I stayed with Comcast, I would hit it as soon as I get a 4K TV and start watching 4K sources.

EDIT: minor change.

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#57

Post by toomuchtodo »

rifung wrote: post #54
toomuchtodo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe in net neutrality on wireless spectrum. Not all bits are created equally. If you don't like the policy, there are at least three other national carriers to choose from. I'm exhausted from a vocal minority thinking their opinion matters in this regard. The market has spoken, and does not care.

Sorry since I know you're exhausted already but can you share why you think not all bits are created equally? I always thought it was bizarre how companies charge for tethering, especially after data caps were introduced. Aren't they all the same to the carrier?

> but can you share why you think not all bits are created equally?

Streaming video is different than the tool who decides he's going to torrent tens of GBs over their cellular connection. You're streaming 780p or 1080p content to a device that can't display the additional resolution over 480p? You've just wasted that bandwidth on the local tower (which matters if you're in urban areas).

(Spotify does this right in the sense that it'll cache music locally, even if you have not elected to download your playlists)

> I always thought it was bizarre how companies charge for tethering, especially after data caps were introduced. Aren't they all the same to the carrier?

Non-mobile devices can generate a higher volume of data than a mobile device alone. You can go eat at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but they don't let you bring a wheelbarrow with.

Don't take my word for it though: http://twinprime.com/lte-has-slowed-by-50-in-the-us/

"While the US LTE capacity has remained relatively constant over the last 12 months, the number of users, as well as the bandwidth consumed per user via video and music streaming, video calls, and real-time entertainment like Netflix has resulted in an overall slowdown of LTE across the network.

The reverse effect is observed in new regions like South America, or Eastern Europe. As these areas begin to come online to 4G networks they experience impressive speeds due to the lack of initial subscribers. Eventually, their performance slows as carriers sign up more 4G customers and the LTE resources become more scarce as a result."

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#58

Post by roymurdock »

praxulus wrote: post #20
davesque wrote: post #17

$48 million seems like a slap on the wrist. T-Mobile made $32 billion in revenue in 2015 and just posted $479 million in profit. I wish I could feel like these fines actually acted as a deterrent.

Comparing the fine to total revenue and total profit is completely meaningless. What's relevant is how much they were saving in infrastructure costs by throttling those users. E.g. If they saved less than $24 million and had a >50% chance of getting caught, this works perfectly well as a deterrent no matter how large there overall profits were.

Cost is only one side of the equation. You also have to factor in the approximate value of the revenue generated by subscribers who were misled into believing that they had unlimited, unthrottled data, and who might have selected a competitor's service had the secret quota been honestly advertised.

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#59

Post by jasonjayr »

I ..... thought T-Mobile's policy was generally well known? Especially in the face of a few years ago, At&t hitting up folks for astronomical bills when iPhones were new, and folks were blasting past their data limits? I've had data with them since they were VoiceStream, and knew what each data plan offered.

Anyone who asked, I told them that T-Mobile's policy was WAY more consumer friendly than the other carriers, especially for someone who absolutely needs a data connection (and doesn't wander outside their relatively weak coverage)

What if the FCC mandated some kind of 'nutrition label' for ISP plans, that specified the technical points of their service offering? Spell out limits, min/max latency, best-effort/guaranteed, fair/shaped and what happens when limits are exceeded? Wouldn't be clearly in their realm of power to regulate how the these plans are marketed, rather than let the ISP's confuses folks with ambiguous language?

Re: T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling ‘unlimited data’ plans

#60

Post by DigitalJack »

amadeusw wrote: post #23
DigitalJack wrote: post #11

When the government sues for stuff like that, where does the money go? I mean, it's a punishment to have to pay, sure, but why does the government get the money? Shouldn't the people being screwed be the ones getting that?

> T-Mobile will pay for those benefits through a $35.5 million consumer benefit program, with an additional $7.5 million paid directly to the US Treasury and $5 million in services and equipment provided to American schools.

Thanks. Glad to read that, but even 7.5 mil to the government seems like a conflict of interest.
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