Monday, August 31, 2015

T-Mobile hunts down network abusers


Whenever we see an operator offering "unlimited" data, we immediately start looking for the small letters to see just how much data does that "unlimited" mean. But this time, it's the opposite: it's T-Mobile that is looking for a small percentage of users that are abusing of its unlimited data plan.

T-Mobile is one of the few mobile operator that offers a truly unlimited data plan, though it also thinks enough is enough when some customers are using up to 2TB of data per month.

The thing is, the unlimited data plan is provided just for mobile data, and should you want to use your smartphone as an hotspot or tethered to other devices, then you have a limit of 7GB per month for that particular use. The problem is, it's not that hard for this tethered/hotspot data to be masked and accounted as regular mobile data, meaning you won't have to deal with the 7GB limit, and keep using the truly unlimited data at full speed. Something T-Mobile CEO isn't willing to accept anymore.

Even though I think data is data and shouldn't be discriminated, I'm forced to understand that - at least for now - the expected mobile data use is severely different from the type of use a fixed connection is expected to handle. (Eventually we'll get to the point where cellular infrastructure will be able to handle as much data as a wired/fiber connection and that won't be a problem any longer.)

Anyway... I think we all have to agree that using a smartphone to download nearly 3GB of data every hour, of every day, during 30 days... can be considered excessive.

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