In a move that will certainly have those in the know scratching their head in a brand new wave of confusion over the reality of things, T-Mobile has today announced new “Value plans” in which it’s becoming “more affordable than ever to step up to data on America’s Largest 4G Network.” Starting on July 24th (less than a week from today,) new two-year agreements (for new and existing customers, if they want,) will include a variety of options with a range of price points for talk while unlimited text and unlimited data will be tiered to the tune of 2 GB, 5 GB, and 10 GB – with no overage charges. What’s going on here, you might ask? It’s what’s called throttling, and T-Mobile is turning it into something positive.
What T-Mobile is doing here is saying that you’ll always have “unlimited data,” but depending on the plan you choose, your data speeds will begin to get slower after a certain point. For example if you’re downloading something bigger than 2 GB (you never would, but bear with me here,) you’ll download it as fast as possible until you’ve gone through 2 GB of data, at which point your download will start to slow down significantly. Of course if you then bump your plan to 5 GB or 10 GB, you’ll go fast until that point again. At no point will you be charged an overage fee for going over your allotted “high-speed data” plan point.
WIth this new pricing, a new Value family plan with unlimited talk, unlimited texts, and unlimited data throttled after 2 GB will cost you just $49.99 per line. There will also be a a lineup of mobile broadband service options for both Value and Classic plans. Another example here is that customers may add one of these new overage-free Value plans to their voice service for $19.99 more per month with the 2 GB plan.
Monthly4G and Pay As You Go plans will continue to be offered and we expect, though we’ve not yet heard back directly from T-Mobile, that plans currently in action will be allowed to be grandfathered in for the future.
What do you think, community, seem like a good way to work throttling into the public conscious in a positive way?
One of the dutch providers has done the same. KPN came out with their new plans and a lot of people were not happy. Most fear the other two major providers will follow (T-Mobile and Vodafone)
One of the dutch providers has done the same. KPN came out with their new plans and a lot of people were not happy. Most fear the other two major providers will follow (T-Mobile and Vodafone)
Well, this has been the common praxis in europe for the last years.
Man I’m never changing my vzw plan. I am just plain ol regular unlimited haha. I don’t have to deal with this shit
So…. after X mb or gb, my speeds slow down…. you mean they can get slower than 50kbps and timing out all the time? Really…. amazing….
I’ve already had to deal with this. I didn’t exactly know what this meant when I picked up my HTC Sensation 4G, and when I reached 2GB (rather quickly, I should point out, as you would expect someone to do when they are all gaga over their first android phone), I had the pleasant experience of having my data dropped to sloth slow speeds. You really have no idea how slow this throttling is until you’ve experienced it. I can’t even watch videos online once throttling kicks in. Luckily my cycle started over yesterday, but I’m already at some 340MB and I’m already having to plan how I’m going to avoid using data (because otherwise there is no way I’ll have full speed data left over at the end of this cycle). It’s really pathetic that I can’t use my phone for any data related stuff in my room because I have to go downstairs in order to use wifi if I want to ever hope of not reaching 2GB too quickly.