T-Mobile caps smartphone users' data at 500 MB/month

There is a lot of FUD flying around over this issue. Hopefully I can dispel some of it.

Firstly, it's a fair usage policy, not a hard limit. You don't get charged for over-use with a FUP. With my contract (which is with Orange), if I go over the FUP a little bit, nothing happens. If I take the piss then they will ask me to upgrade to a larger data package, or use less, or lose it.

Secondly, the "T-Mobile says no videos or downloads on your mobile" idea isn't entirely correct. If you hit the 500MB limit in a month, your internet continues to work on your phone! However, streaming video and other data heavy activities will not work once you are past the limit.

Lastly, it's really, really hard to use 3GB of data on a mobile phone. I have 3G watchdog installed on my Droid and the only time I've come close to 500MB is when I was tethering. 500MB doesn't sound like a lot these days, but on a mobile phone it really is plenty. My usage over the last 6 complete months is as follows: 295, 316, 388, 166, 407, 211 (all figures in megabytes) and I use my phone pretty heavily. YMMV of course.

However, I would understand anyone being upset by these changes. I hope Ofcom finds in the consumers' favour and the change is repealed, or people are allowed to get out of their contracts early with no penalty. The way T-Mobile has handled this, from the "announcement" (or lack thereof), to telling people what their smartphones are and aren't for, is a lesson in how not to do things.

I'd be upset, but T-Mobile failed to get an upgrade smartphone to me within 2 months of my order and so I switched to Vodafone and got it within 3 days.

Full story, for the interested:

I had recently moved home and tried to use T-Mobile's website to update my address. Unfortunately, it had one of those forms which require you to enter a postal code and select the correct address from the results of a postal code lookup, with no way to manually correct it. Since the postal code lookup didn't give my address, I chose to call T-Mobile's customer service number to get the address changed at the same time as asking for an upgrade.

I spoke to one customer service representative to update the address, confirming very clearly that they had the correct address, and then asked to be put through to the upgrades department. After negotiating the upgrade, I asked whether it would be dispatched to the new address I had just given them and was assured that it would, within the next week.

A week and a half later, the phone had not arrived and I hadn't heard anything, so I called again to find out the status of the order, and was told that the phone had been dispatched to a non-existent address as that was what T-Mobile had on file for me. In fact, it was the incorrect address suggested by the postal code lookup service which I had specifically called to have corrected. Note also that T-Mobile had on record that the phone could not be delivered and neglected to contact me.

After updating my records (finally) to the correct address, T-Mobile told me they couldn't send out another phone as stock was limited and that they couldn't simply send the erroneously sent handset to the correct address once it returned to them because that "wasn't how their system worked".

Another month of going round in circles with inept customer support reps and I was gone. Next time I won't be so patient.

Wireless limits have to be hit some day. Each tower supports one bandwidth-worth of traffic no matter how many users are in that area. Imagine a wired network with hundreds of people on one switch.

Of course they are handling it badly. But its not the case that they have any simple recourse - a successful ad campaign resulted in oversubscribed bandwidth. They can install more towers - lag time: months or years to get the right-of-way. They can improve cacheing etc on their end. And they can get folks to use it less.

Another customer who's fed up with this. I went with T-Mobile just over a month ago knowing they had other limitations - worse coverage and slower data rates - specifically because they had good data terms. Now this isn't true, and I _will_ be kicking up a fuss about this in the effort to get either this rescinded or my contract cancelled without penalty (for which I'm quite happy to return the phone provided under it).

T-Mobile, a thought experiment for you. You've decided you only want to provide me with half of a key service that you agreed to when I agreed to the contract. How about I reciprocate and only want to provide you with half of the payment I said I would? Would that be OK too?

This could be a monster screwup, my phone contract has 1GB data limit, for an extra 5GBP (7.5USD) per month I get boosted upto 3GB, the ability to officially use my phone for tethering and a proper HSDPA+ data rate. Since I go off site and work in Police facilities where the odds of me being able to connect to their network is NIL this is an important feature for me.

Apparently (this is unconfirmed properly) I may well find the FUP limit for me being dropped to either 1GB or 500MB depending on who you ask. While most months I don't get near to the FUP if I'm doing a lot of work onsite then it's likely I'll bust 500MB but I can't see 1GB being all that likely. TMobile FUP isn't too bad as when you break it they don't hit you with excess data fees but I'm hacked off with this and will move when my contract is up in April (It doesn't seem worth the hassle of arguing) For folks with an Android phone they were forced to get the 3GB upgrade which was by far the most generous of the UK networks recently. Most networks previously have grandfathered you until the expiry of your contract (or you renew) which is at least fair.

It's not entirely obvious if this means that tmobile have accidently broken the contract with a lot of android phone owners who can now walk away from tmobile and get a cheaper deal elsewhere (I happen to think yes). I've had no notification yet of this change so I wonder if it's been put on hold while the lawyers rethink it.