T-Mobile CEO John Legere has announced this week that a small amount of T-Mobile users are frustratingly misusing the T-Mobile network for their own personal gain, and they will soon be hearing from the company about their mis-use.
All T-Mobile 4G LTE unlimited data plans come with 7GB of personal hotspot tethering, which users can take advantage of whenever there isn't a broadband connection available for the user's other devices, but users of jailbroken and rooted phones are finding clever ways around these caps by masking tethering data as smartphone data, and deliberately violating T-Mobile's terms of service.
As a result, Legere notes that 1% of T-Mobile users are using data amounts as high as 2TB (2,000GB) of data per month, which is almost 286x the amount of data T-Mobile is willing to give you for personal hotspot tethering. Consequently, T-Mobile will be hawk-eyeing these users and slowing them down after they reach 7GB of data until they pay for an additional 7GB to tether with.
Originally Posted by John Legere
Here’s what’s happening: when customers buy our unlimited 4G LTE plan for their smartphones we include a fixed amount of LTE to be used for tethering (using the “Smartphone Mobile HotSpot” feature), at no extra cost, for the occasions when broadband may not be convenient or available. If customers hit that high-speed tethering limit, those tethering speeds slow down. If a customer needs more LTE tethering, they can add-on more. Simple.
However, these violators are going out of their way with all kinds of workarounds to steal more LTE tethered data. They’re downloading apps that hide their tether usage, rooting their phones, writing code to mask their activity, etc. They are “hacking” the system to swipe high speed tethered data. These aren't naive amateurs; they are clever hackers who are willfully stealing for their own selfish gain. It’s a small group – 1/100 of a percent of our 59 million customers – but some of them are using as much as 2 terabytes (2,000GB!) of data in a month. I’m not sure what they are doing with it – stealing wireless access for their entire business, powering a small cloud service, providing broadband to a small city, mining for bitcoin -- but I really don’t care!
T-Mobile's solution will be throttling these users, which is an approach that AT&T has been taking for a long time and was recently
sued by the FCC for, although AT&T was throttling all users who used too much data, whether it was used for personal hotspot purposes or not, while T-Mobile is making it perfectly clear that smartphone data is unlimited and tethering data is not.
Legere says that although people will criticize T-Mobile for this movement, he's sure it's the right path to take to ensure a great network experience for every user.
Originally Posted by John Legere
These abusers will probably try to distract everyone by waving their arms about throttling data. Make no mistake about it – this is not the same issue. Don’t be duped by their sideshow. We are going after every thief, and I am starting with the 3,000 users who know exactly what they are doing. The offenders start hearing from us tomorrow. No more abuse and no risk to the rest of our customers’ experience. It's over. If you are interested, you can find more info in our support forum.
I’m not in this business to play data cop, but we started this wireless revolution to change the industry for good and to fight for consumers. I won't let a few thieves ruin things for anyone else. We’re going to lead from the front on this, just like we always do. Count on it!
From what it looks like, those on unlimited data plans on T-Mobile's network can keep their unlimited data plans without expecting to be throttled, and those that use their fair share of 7GB of personal hotspot data should be fine as well, but after you reach 7GB, you will be expected to pay a little more cash to unlock another 7GB of data if you happen to go over your cap in one month.
T-Mobile says that these network "thieves" will begin being contacted by T-Mobile as soon as Monday.
For what it's worth, there are people out there that will argue personal hotspot data should be treated the same as regular smartphone data and that these caps are just as annoying as the caps any other carrier might be imposing.
If you're a T-Mobile customer, how much data do you use on a monthly basis for tethering?
Source: T-Mobile
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