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Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

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Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#41

Post by 0x0 »

nivla wrote: post #25
kgermino wrote: post #2

Another win for T-Mobile. I have to say, for all the negative things I've heard about them in past years, the more I hear about the company the harder I think about switching from Verizon. No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?

I have had great experience being on T-mobile for about 5 years. Their customer service is exceptional and they also allow you to unlock your phone after 3 months. However there are a couple of things that do irritate me: [1] They sniff the header of every web-request looking for desktop browser string. If found they sent you a warning text threatening to cut off your service. It sucks especially when you move to a n…

Wow, that's pretty evil. I wonder what would happen if a reasonably popular ios app started using a desktop-like User-Agent in communications to its server!

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#42

Post by DanBC »

kgermino wrote: post #2

Another win for T-Mobile. I have to say, for all the negative things I've heard about them in past years, the more I hear about the company the harder I think about switching from Verizon. No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?

Eh, in the UK they have / had a package of "unlimited" 3g, £30 for 90 days.

Unlimited means they do weird stuff to prevent some content from working after one gigabyte per month - flash videos don't work, for example.

They throw up interstitial warning pages which break forms and the back button, which can be annoying.

They have fierce image compression proxies, but the Windows client (if you chose to use it, you don't have to) allows you to turn it off.

I carefully checked that it was unlimited, and I gave them fair warning that I consider myself a heavy internet user, and I made sure they knew before they took me on that I'd be hammering the bandwidth. And I do.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#43

Post by pavanky »

rayiner wrote: post #28
liquidise wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. And much like high-speed highway driving, if my iphone 4s were to use its full internet bandwidth, i would be a mortal danger to my fellow man. Oh wait.

No, but you might negatively impact the user experience of someone else in your cell sector. It's about system design. Your phone is just a way to access AT&T's wireless network. As the designer of that system, AT&T is entitled to control how your devices access it to optimize overall performance.

This would make sense if other phones are throttled similarly. And the article suggests they are not.

(an android user)

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#44

Post by dylangs1030 »

It really sucks that carriers do this, but I think it's important to realize that the issue is transparency, not that they do it.

Verizon and AT&T have a problem with scaling. They should be honest and upfront about what speeds you're realistically going to attain, but I don't think they have an obligation not to throttle people. It's honestly hard to exist without it. I don't know if Verizon and AT&T could operate such competitive networks without throttling.

Another thing to realize is that this also happens to internet download/upload speeds. How often do you realistically hit the maximum speeds you're advertised?

I think there should be accountability for lack of transparency, but I can't say I blame them for throttling. I don't have enough expertise on cell tower networking to know if they could stay profitable with competitively sized networks otherwise.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#45

Post by dylangs1030 »

rayiner wrote: post #13

Newsflash: many of your cars are governor limited to 120 or 130 miles per hour, even though the car could go faster. The vast conspiracy!

I agree with you in principle, but to be honest, I think this analogy gives people the wrong idea. They're attacking it based on phones being non-lethal, which is probably unproductive to your point.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#46

Post by pavanky »

coldtea wrote: post #29
liquidise wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. And much like high-speed highway driving, if my iphone 4s were to use its full internet bandwidth, i would be a mortal danger to my fellow man. Oh wait.

> Indeed. And much like high-speed highway driving, if my iphone 4s were to use its full internet bandwidth, i would be a mortal danger to my fellow man. Oh wait. It would be a total annoyance of your fellow subscribers to the same network. Maybe not a car accident, but a lot like traffic congestion. I mean, since capacity does not grow on trees, and it is not that easy or cheap to expand it.

You are not going to be using the peak capacity constantly.

If you are listening to music / watching videos, then the rate at which you are downloading is limited to the quality of those streams which is often not close to the peak.

If you are downloading an app, it can use peak bandwidth, but you are done in seconds.

If you are browsing the internet, you are not bothering anyone at all.

The only issue I see is if you are torrenting from your phone. How many people would you see doing that ?

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#47

Post by fencepost »

backwardm wrote: post #27
ampsonic wrote: post #4

Can you override (with or without a jail break?)

T-Mobile includes the personal hotspot at no extra charge. I just switched from AT&T too and have been really happy so far. My phone only gets Edge speeds right now, only because they haven't "reframed" their cell towers yet. (not exactly sure what that entails, but I understood it to mean that after reframing my phone would be on 4G, have better reception, etc.)

This TmoNews post should give you a bit more information on what the "refarming" means: http://www.tmonews.com/2013/05/why-now-is-a-great-time-to-be...

Basically they currently have GSM on the 1900MHz band and HSPA+ on the AWS bands (1700/2100). They're in the process of reducing the capacity allocated to GSM, splitting HSPA+ onto all the frequency ranges, and adding limited LTE on the AWS bands. Later on they're going to reduce the GSM capacity a bit further while expanding the LTE capacity on the AWS bands. There's a nice little chart that shows this much better than I described it, while continuing to gloss over any technical details.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#48

Post by ig1 »

DanBC wrote: post #42
kgermino wrote: post #2

Another win for T-Mobile. I have to say, for all the negative things I've heard about them in past years, the more I hear about the company the harder I think about switching from Verizon. No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?

Eh, in the UK they have / had a package of "unlimited" 3g, £30 for 90 days. Unlimited means they do weird stuff to prevent some content from working after one gigabyte per month - flash videos don't work, for example. They throw up interstitial warning pages which break forms and the back button, which can be annoying. They have fierce image compression proxies, but the Windows client (if you chose to use it, you don…

You can negotiate with them to get proper unlimited.

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#49

Post by paragonred »

nivla wrote: post #25
kgermino wrote: post #2

Another win for T-Mobile. I have to say, for all the negative things I've heard about them in past years, the more I hear about the company the harder I think about switching from Verizon. No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?

I have had great experience being on T-mobile for about 5 years. Their customer service is exceptional and they also allow you to unlock your phone after 3 months. However there are a couple of things that do irritate me: [1] They sniff the header of every web-request looking for desktop browser string. If found they sent you a warning text threatening to cut off your service. It sucks especially when you move to a n…

I've been using T-mobile for about 5 years as well and have been tethering for about 3 years with no issue. I just have a regular data plan. No hotspot option or anything.

I wonder why this isn't happening to everyone?

Re: Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

#50

Post by DanBC »

ig1 wrote: post #48
DanBC wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, in the UK they have / had a package of "unlimited" 3g, £30 for 90 days. Unlimited means they do weird stuff to prevent some content from working after one gigabyte per month - flash videos don't work, for example. They throw up interstitial warning pages which break forms and the back button, which can be annoying. They have fierce image compression proxies, but the Windows client (if you chose to use it, you don…

You can negotiate with them to get proper unlimited.

I did 18058 MB yesterday. I'd feel cheeky if I asked them for proper unlimited.
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