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6kb/sec? thats slower than dialup!! I a cancelling my G1 order! Lets protest this!
This is from T-Mobile:
TMobile: If your total data usage in any billing cycle is more than 1GB, your data throughput for the remainder of that cycle may be reduced to 50 kbps or less. Your data session, plan, or service may be suspended, terminated, or restricted for significant roaming or if you use your service in a way that interferes with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users
It 1GB not 10GB
it is not 1gb im pretty sure t-mobile already established this
Welcome to last month. Tmobile announced at first it would be 1GB cap, but quickly changed that. But if you want to protest over something that isnt even true, go right ahead.
ok, T-Mobile didnt take it back but rephrased the sentence.
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From Gizmondo
T-Mobile Removes 1GB 3G Data Cap for G1 Android Phone
T-Mobile's just rolled back on their 1GB usage cap on their 3G plans for upcoming G1 Android customers, instead going to a hold-up-while-we-figure-this-out route. The statement they give now states that they can reduce throughput for "a small fraction" of users who are using too much data, but exact terms and limits are still being reviewed before they're finalized. Statement after the jump.
Our goal, when the T-Mobile G1 becomes available in October, is to provide affordable, high-speed data service allowing customers to experience the full data capabilities of the device and our 3G network. At the same time, we have a responsibility to provide the best network experience for all of our customers so we reserve the right to temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of our customers who have excessive or disproportionate usage that interferes with our network performance or our ability to provide quality service to all of our customers.
We removed the 1GB soft limit from our policy statement, and we are confident that T-Mobile G1 customers will enjoy the high speed of data access over our 3G network. The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers.
he jus wanted to be cool but ppl tryin to be cool never succeed
brooklynite said:
6kb/sec? thats slower than dialup!! I a cancelling my G1 order! Lets protest this!
This is from T-Mobile:
TMobile: If your total data usage in any billing cycle is more than 1GB, your data throughput for the remainder of that cycle may be reduced to 50 kbps or less. Your data session, plan, or service may be suspended, terminated, or restricted for significant roaming or if you use your service in a way that interferes with our network or ability to provide quality service to other users
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Please cancel your order. I'm sure there's a Motorola with your name on it somewhere.
This is so retarded...people have had the phone for 2 or 3 days and is amazing all the nonsense crap they talk.
Dude get brand new Iphone that after 2 or 3 year in the market,finally is 3G (I'm kidding)Leave us alone cause we want to enjoy our G1.
For a 1st generation release is working pretty well.
brooklynite said:
ok, T-Mobile didnt take it back but rephrased the sentence.
----------------
From Gizmondo
T-Mobile Removes 1GB 3G Data Cap for G1 Android Phone
T-Mobile's just rolled back on their 1GB usage cap on their 3G plans for upcoming G1 Android customers, instead going to a hold-up-while-we-figure-this-out route. The statement they give now states that they can reduce throughput for "a small fraction" of users who are using too much data, but exact terms and limits are still being reviewed before they're finalized. Statement after the jump.
Our goal, when the T-Mobile G1 becomes available in October, is to provide affordable, high-speed data service allowing customers to experience the full data capabilities of the device and our 3G network. At the same time, we have a responsibility to provide the best network experience for all of our customers so we reserve the right to temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of our customers who have excessive or disproportionate usage that interferes with our network performance or our ability to provide quality service to all of our customers.
We removed the 1GB soft limit from our policy statement, and we are confident that T-Mobile G1 customers will enjoy the high speed of data access over our 3G networky. The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers.
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Click to collapse
Yeah so if your burning throught 15GB a month dowloading torrents on your phone then they will cut you back but the average user, even power users will never have an issues. Your arguement is lame.
Guys, EASY! I am a noob in this forum!
Sorry all you G1 lovers! I did not mean to offend G1 or Andriod, I am just pissed at T-Mobile being a communist limiting access. The internet on the Wing sucks as the phone is always running out of memory all the time (besides being as slow as dial-up) so I hope it gets a bit better on the G1.
For most of us who are not tethering to download torrents or doing other outrageous things on 3g, it doesn't matter. Their current wording seems to indicate they'll chop the users off the top until the network speeds back up. I will not be using an outrageous amount of bandwidth. But I do want 1 meg a second when I get on to do something. I like the current wording, don't let others screw my network.
brooklynite said:
Guys, EASY! I am a noob in this forum!
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okay guys, both sides, calm down. i can see both side's arguments. but yes brooklynite, your first impression with tmobile is valid. but all other carriers do this too, they just don't come out and say it out right.
windows mobile transport layer stack has a transfer limit. so practically speaking, there are lots of things you can't do on your phone or impractical, when compared to your laptop (say using a USB 3G card). hence the most likely thing you do on yoru phone is email, web, chat, which are small data, and music and video, which are bigger but they will be most likely formated for the mobile device so smaller in size compared to the desktop version. so in conclusion, it is really really hard to top that 1GB data each month. you don't need to worry about a thing if you use your phone in a regular sense
now speaking on be half of the other side, "welcome to xda dev", they all mean it, but words came out wrong
buggybug0 said:
okay guys, both sides, calm down. i can see both side's arguments. but yes brooklynite, your first impression with tmobile is valid. but all other carriers do this too, they just don't come out and say it out right.
windows mobile transport layer stack has a transfer limit. so practically speaking, there are lots of things you can't do on your phone or impractical, when compared to your laptop (say using a USB 3G card). hence the most likely thing you do on yoru phone is email, web, chat, which are small data, and music and video, which are bigger but they will be most likely formated for the mobile device so smaller in size compared to the desktop version. so in conclusion, it is really really hard to top that 1GB data each month. you don't need to worry about a thing if you use your phone in a regular sense
now speaking on be half of the other side, "welcome to xda dev", they all mean it, but words came out wrong
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The 1GB cap had to be removed because the G1 does not to mobile web browsing so video and data is not the mobile version ie, not smaller webpages or formatted for mobile video.
Statement from t-mobile site:
Real Web BrowsingThe T-Mobile G1™ was built to browse the Web. Using the touch screen, QWERTY keyboard and trackball you can access your favorite pages and browse like you were sitting at your computer.
Access in one touch
Real Web, not mobile version
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In other words if you tend to watch youtube on your phone a lot you could reach that 1Gb limit. Not to mention if you received a lot of emails a day with attachments for work purposes, for example I receive about 10MB average a day in attachments varying from PDF files for manuals, electronic drawings etc, Images, in a month you could get 250MB there. Also you have music downloads available through amazon to your phone, averaging at 5MB per file. So 1 GB is quite easy to reach and after that with their previous statement you would be limited to 50K/s till your next cycle. That would be very frustrating.
If adobe flash starts working (I read something about a video player called Video Gadgetz which would enable that) then I'll start watching hulu from my phone when im stuck at airports at one of my many business trips. WiFi is great but you have to pay for it. So I'm hoping they leave it true unlimited but do punish any user who over does it (ie someone actually stupid enough to torrent...it's opensource..it will happen unfortunetly).
By the way..anyopne find any more info on adobe flash compatibility in browsing. I would be so psyched if I could watch hulu on my G1
And I just noticed..i have been a member for almost 2 years..use this forum for all my phone and updates and flashing..and just had my first post... unbelievable..so many forumes..hard to keep track
I never hit 1GB while I was tethering with my Wing. I doubt I have hit 1gb on my G1 as of yet. I doubt I will go above 10GB unless I thether and I surely won't be downloading things like I did on the wing.
BTW you think tmobile is bad. Read the fine print on any of verizons PocketPC or Internet cards that have EVDO... After 5GB they have the right to cancel your contract and charge you the early termination fee. How is that for "being a communist" You do realize these are businesses trying to make money. Not governments trying to keep their people alive.
I use a usb modem on my laptop with a 5GB soft cap. I've hit it once. I don't watch movies online anymore!
When using my Axim online I paid attention to website size and noticed it was 250-400 Kb per click. That adds up fast. Plus watching youtube or downloading music. 1 GB comes up pretty quick.
Although listening to streaming radio doesn't use as much bandwidth as I thought it would. 35 ish for talk radio and 60-70 kb/sec (kilobits not bytes) for music. I used about 28 Mb over a couple of hours of talk radio.
Xbox live also didn't use as much as I thought. Web browsing used more bandwidth than live.
Enough on "picking" on him.
Remember we were all where he is now.
He made a mistake.
Although, flaming him is pissing me off. So stop.
FYI:
Comcast caps their home service to their clients. So if Comcast can Cell providers will as well.
I was lucky enough to be able to take advantage of the recent Orange contract change palarver and move to T-Mobile. Much cheaper contract, twice as much data and not having to deal with Orange's 'interesting' outlook on customer service.
Not sure what this will mean but http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8243226.stm
I don't think so large mergers are ever good for the customer though.
Practically-speaking they will probably get past the regulator with a bit of begging as O2 and Voda still own a decent chunk of the market, and the T-mob people will benefit from the better backbone capacity of Orange. The whole contract escape thing will still apply as it's in EU law - if the new company ups prices in the future, people can envoke the cancellation clause then just as they did last month. I imagine they'll reprice only when the brand names merge, and only to the bare minimum, as they know people will exploit it to death. You can't keep the same prices forever though, as everyone's copying each other so switching will be less tempting as time goes on.
Sidebar - if you're using data a lot, Voda UK is the place to be as they're finally rolling out their new backbone. HSDPA at up to 14 mbits to all existing customers instead of the 3 to 7 mbits everyone else caps at, and no handset upgrades required. Initial testing proves it works as advertised, though of course depends on the signal strength.
Does this mean that if the do merge, we will be able to cancel our contracts etc again???
Thanks for the reply Spartan. Will look into Vodaphone.
I don't think contracts will be able to be broken unless they change charges or similar. . .
c_lee said:
Sidebar - if you're using data a lot, Voda UK is the place to be as they're finally rolling out their new backbone. HSDPA at up to 14 mbits to all existing customers instead of the 3 to 7 mbits everyone else caps at, and no handset upgrades required. Initial testing proves it works as advertised, though of course depends on the signal strength.
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Pull the other one.
Vodafone may be rolling out 14.4Mbps in about 3 places but for those of us who live in the majority of the rest of the country, it's just a slap in the face.
Personally, given the choice between HSDPA coverage with O2, Orange or T-Mobile or not even getting 2G coverage with Vodafone, let alone high-speed data, I know who I won't be choosing.
As for all this talk about cancelling contracts, read the article again - even if the merger is approved, both brands will operate under their own names for the first 18 months or so whilst all the admin gets sorted.
Step666 said:
Pull the other one.
Vodafone may be rolling out 14.4Mbps in about 3 places but for those of us who live in the majority of the rest of the country, it's just a slap in the face.
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Their service is currently live for the centers of London, Birmingham and Liverpool simply because those are the three cities with highest HSPA usage density, though it's apparently being rolled out to the whole country over the next 6-12 months. It's a heck of a lot of work, but Voda insist it will happen, and none of the other operators will say they're even considering it. Some say they can't afford it, some say they're waiting for HSPAE/LTE before doing any upgrades.
As I said it is indeed dependent on your RF path and the cell load, but the point is a BTS capped at 14M will be able to run far more users at typical 3-bar rates (1 to 5M), which if you've tried to pull data in the centre of a city with 5 bars on your phone you know is a big problem - we hit the backhaul capacity very easily. Of course in the middle of nowhere your data rates won't be any good, but it's supply and demand; if it's only you out there it's uneconomical for anyone to install a cell tower. Femtos are available though, so you can turn your DSL line into a domestic 3G base station.
As I also said, T-mob/Orange prices are only likely to change at the rebrand stage and only where absolutely necessary, but it's still the case that when they do happen the contract escape clauses are still very much there. I doubt you'll get to save much as I guess all the operators will have upped their prices (specially if there's less competition), but we we've seen many people want to get out of long contracts for other reasons.
As my sig says, I don't use Voda nor do I have any connection to them. In theory I use Orange, as they provide Three's 2G capacity, but I wish I didn't!
c_lee said:
...though it's apparently being rolled out to the whole country over the next 6-12 months.
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Last I heard, it's continuing roll-out was 'on an ongoing basis'.
But the problem for those of us who live somewhere other than those certain parts of London, Birmingham and Liverpool is that Vodafone's plans are ridiculously vague - sure, they plan to roll it out to the rest of country but what does that mean exactly?
Does that mean they're going to be increasing the amount of the country that they cover or are they merely going to upgrade the speeds in the few places that they already offer coverage? Because, if it's the second option, it still leaves a lot of people out in the cold because Vodafone's coverage is already pretty crummy - they're a long way off being the best network for coverage.
As for femtocells, what a joke.
If your broadband speeds are good enough to make installing one viable, why would you then want to use a mobile-based internet connection and not just your landline instead?
Anyway, speeds are just one element of offering a practical cellular data service to customers - obviously (as I've already mentioned) coverage is another factor, one that Vodafone currents fails quite badly on and there's also the issue of download allowances, another area that Vodafone is really quite poor for.
Going back to the point at hand though, I for one doubt that T-Mobile and Orange merging will cause end customers to be worse off - T-Mobile hasn't been a big player for a while, they're not particularly competitive so I honestly doubt that their disappearance as a separate entity will be that big an issue.
In fact, I reckon it'd probably be better for customer in the long run - being leapfrogged in this manner will, hopefully, force Vodafone and O2 to up their game - both are guilty of a lot of complacency of late so to be taken down a peg or two and forced to approach the market from a disadvantaged position could well be a good thing.
Firstly the roll-out will happen to all existing Voda 3G BTS nodes, as the backhaul upgrade is required for other purposes. Installing new BTSs is a different matter entirely, and I agree they're not great in rural areas (but then no one operator is ahead of the game on that one. Our office is in the middle of the countryside and we get a decent Three signal purely by chance - no 3G from anyone else - but a few miles down the road at home only Orange will work.
All the operators are gradually populating the dead areas where there's a demand, but nobody's going to put 3G in where there aren't enough customers and there's a 2G signal available - the priority is going to the zero signal areas first, and only those where people are calling them and complaining about it.
Agree a femtocell is a strange idea if you use your landline for calls and DSL through a PC, but many people run their entire lives through their cell number, and forwarding it to a landline costs you money when someone calls you. Femtos mean you're not paying for the calls in either direction, and helps people who don't have a wifi-enabled handset to pull down 'free' data.
I would like to start by thanking you for your reply, it makes for interesting reading.
But I reserve the right to remain cynical (I'm Scottish, what do you expect...). Large parts of Vodafone's 3G network don't even support 7.2Mbps yet, so I just don't see them upgrading it all to 14.4.
As for the problems with signal, I'm not talking about rural areas.
Where I work is in a built-up area, near the centre of a large town and, as it happens, right across the road from a mobile phone mast. Every network except Vodafone offers HSDPA coverage but to just make a call on Vodafone you have to hang out a window or head off down the street waving your phone in the air to get signal.
I see what you're saying about some people's lives being run through their mobile but I still cannot quite see the use of femtocells.
If a person's phone is that important, then they would be unlikely to be using a network that offered such poor coverage in their home. Alternatively, if they already have reasonable 2G coverage, then why get a femtocell to aid 3G coverage when you have a perfectly good landline internet connection which will be cheaper to use, almost certainly offer a faster speed and will definitely have a larger usage allowance; not to mention that no-one in their right mind would argue that the web experience on a phone can match that of a proper PC or laptop.
A femtocell doesn't give you free data, nor does it give you wi-fi access - it merely improves the network signal strength/coverage in your home but you still have to pay for data the same way you would if you were out and about.
In your case, you can find the local spread of BTSs using Ofcom's Sitefinder database - www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk - and one trick to see what BTS your phone is hitting for data is to open Google Maps with the GPS option turned off - "your location" is then that of the BTS you're downloading maps from.
If your operator's own map claims good coverage for your house, but in practice you don't have any, then it's ether a line of sight issue (something conductive between you and the antenna) or a terrain dip (sectors put out a roughly-horizontal beam, angled down a few degrees, so if you're above or below it because of your relative heights, you can be over the road from the thing and not get a signal). In modern houses, we've also seen issues with foil-backed cavity wall insulation acting like a Faraday cage and ruining your signal until you're near a window. Either way, phone the operator and let them know - coverage is only altered when someone tells them it's not as good as they think it is.
Just FYI, a femtocell uses your existing DSL ISP's connection for all the data, including voice packets, and simply routes them to the mobile operator's gateway IP address - so depending on your operator and service plan they may or may not be counted as airtime minutes/bytes. Voda does count them, however that's not the norm as you're in effect paying twice for the same megabyte (to your ISP and to Voda); but as so few people have femtos in the UK, nobody's grumbling enough to be heard.
c_lee said:
Firstly the roll-out will happen to all existing Voda 3G BTS nodes, as the backhaul upgrade is required for other purposes. Installing new BTSs is a different matter entirely, and I agree they're not great in rural areas (but then no one operator is ahead of the game on that one. Our office is in the middle of the countryside and we get a decent Three signal purely by chance - no 3G from anyone else - but a few miles down the road at home only Orange will work.
All the operators are gradually populating the dead areas where there's a demand, but nobody's going to put 3G in where there aren't enough customers and there's a 2G signal available - the priority is going to the zero signal areas first, and only those where people are calling them and complaining about it.
Agree a femtocell is a strange idea if you use your landline for calls and DSL through a PC, but many people run their entire lives through their cell number, and forwarding it to a landline costs you money when someone calls you. Femtos mean you're not paying for the calls in either direction, and helps people who don't have a wifi-enabled handset to pull down 'free' data.
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Three is the only provider with any kind of 3G coverage in our town (rural shropshire) they claim to best 3g coverage in the UK - and my experience with them backs that up - im with Orange for my phone and Three for my dongle.
Sorry to bring the speed issue again but I read this the other day, which is rather fitting to some of the discussions we've been having of late.
Hi there
My t-mobile contract ends within few weeks and I really want the HD2! My early upgrade offers were reallly bad, so I wait what they offer when the contract actually ends.. BUT - if I switch to other network... please let me know:
***Is there any difference in unlimited internet between T-Mobile (its fast on my Web&Walk!), Virgin, Vodafone?
***Customer service... Im really been happy with T-Mob, I had bad exp with Virgin but that was years ago... what you think?
***Any other plusses having HD2 with certain network?
Thanks guys and girls!
It depends on where you live and on the signal of where you are, there isn't a BEST NETWORK for a phone.
Yes- it's no good getting a cheap deal but finding yourself with no signal!
Mobile Internet: They all still advertise 'unlimited' but they all impose a fair usage policy.
Virgin, T-Mobile and Three have 1GB FUP; O2 say theirs is genuinely unlimited but they reserve the right to throttle the accounts of those they consider abusing the service; Vodafone and Orange both have a limit of 500MB.
but vodafone don't charge you when you go over 500mb unlike orange
I would say go with which ever network doesn't have the iphone clogging up the network but they all seem to have them now
fz9999 said:
but vodafone don't charge you when you go over 500mb unlike orange
I would say go with which ever network doesn't have the iphone clogging up the network but they all seem to have them now
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or you can actually use because they have the signal they advertise..
I can't wait to leave vodafone now, because I've found their coverage to be so bad, despite shown as getting 3g and told it was a temporary fault I find coverage at home to be poor to non existent, and 3g spots to be much smaller than stated often losing coverage outside any halfway decent sized town..
VF Customer service (business) are very good in my experience, until a complaint gets passed onto the network team when they start to come up with every excuse known to mankind.
Seriously tempted to just use my spare "3" payg sim when the contract runs out as I get full coverage and it's cheaper, and I get coverage 99% of the places I travel.
O2 work out quite a bit more than the others - you pay £100 for the HD2 on a £35/month contract, with 600 minutes talk and 1000 texts (if you order over the internet - 500 texts if you do the deal in store). This comes with the Unlimited Web bolt on (which normally costs £7.50), but this is limited to 500mb. And it seems you are charged if you go over this.
I've never dealt with O2, so my apologies if the info is wrong, but this is how I'm finding it.
I'm going to give mobilesphonesdirect a ring, to see what they can do the HD2 for as an upgrade on Tmobile. Tmobile want £340 for me to upgrade, or I can cancel and take out a new contract with m.p.d and pay £93 for the phone for £25 a month. That's £13 more for the phone than Virgin, but we're still not sure if Virgin throttle the data speeds more than Tmobile.
Final note - I'm more interested in the Internet on the phone, then texting with actual phone calls far behind. I talk to my misses enough in the house...
Towserspvm2000 said:
Final note - I'm more interested in the Internet on the phone, then texting with actual phone calls far behind. I talk to my misses enough in the house...
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I'm with Vodafone on their £20/month sim-only deal and worryingly I've found signal to be better where I live (which is advertised as variable outdoor coverage on their 3G map) than where I work (which is advertised as strong indoor 3G), so don't rely on their 3G coverage map service as the gospel truth.
I can achieve decent download rates via 3G, typically 150-200kbps which I guess equates to a 5mb broadband link, not too shabby.
Order a load of free pay and go sim cards from the different networks and try them out in the areas you frequent all the time.
H2D2 said:
I can achieve decent download rates via 3G, typically 150-200kbps which I guess equates to a 5mb+ broadband link, not too shabby.
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??? 5Mb (megabit) = roughly 5000Kb so your 150-200Kb is way, way under that!
Your speeds are consistent with a fair 3G signal. HSDPA should give about 1200Kbps (= 1.2Mb or thereabouts) in real life though that will depend on proximity to the cell site, cell congestion etc.
NeilM said:
??? 5Mb (megabit) = roughly 5000Kb so your 150-200Kb is way, way under that!
Your speeds are consistent with a fair 3G signal. HSDPA should give about 1200Kbps (= 1.2Mb or thereabouts) in real life though that will depend on proximity to the cell site, cell congestion etc.
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Fair enough, I'm just relating to real-world conditions where 5mb broadband doesn't equal anywhere near 5000kbps My 18mb broadband connection only achieves 1mb/s download speeds for example
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought Virgin piggyback off T-mobile?
So does this mean that if t-mob throttle the usage, the throttle is also applicable to Virgin Mob customers?
I used to be with Virgin and the coverage was great, now with Vodafone and was always told about their superior coverage compared to other networks.
I have to say I'm sadly dissapointed, I often find it drops out completely. Even in the city centre where you'd assume coverage would be good, I often get "cold" spots with no signal, yet 25m down the road I have full HSDPA signal..... weird.
bdb25 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought Virgin piggyback off T-mobile?
So does this mean that if t-mob throttle the usage, the throttle is also applicable to Virgin Mob customers?
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That's what it seems, although we are trying to see if Tmobile restrict and throttle the Virgin side of things even more...
See this thread here... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=615643
O2's data limit is actually 1GB per month, they just don't like to tell people.
If you negotiate a bit with T-Mobile you may be able to get onto their 3GB/month tariff at not much (if any) extra cost. (When I was buying I had a choice between 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB/month or 1000 minutes, 500 texts and 3GB/month at the same price).
T-Mobile handset deals generally work out cheaper than other networks, but there are hidden extras: you have to pay for Voicemail calls (they don't come out of your minutes) and you don't get any free MMS messages at all (while O2, say, counts an MMS message as four SMS messages from your allowance).
One thing that irritates me about T-Mobile is that they don't support EDGE, which means if there's no 3G signal you drop straight to basic GPRS speeds. Back when I was with O2, if there was no 3G signal there was still a chance you could get EDGE, which is substantially quicker than plain GPRS.
I'd advise any buyer to be wary of mobilephonesdirect - their after-sales service is simply shocking, so if your phone develops a fault you may not get a replacement unless you're willing to take legal action.
Just to add to the previous post,
Vodafone and Virgin Mobile also charge you for MMS messages
Virgin mobile seem to cap data speed at about 384kbps.
Most of them cap the speed.
In fact I tried m.speedtest.com in a vodafone store and the phone refused to load the site.
My vodafone account got defrauded and they charged me for calls which were obviously fraudulent - masked number to US/canada at over £1 a minute that appeared as 121 on my bill....on the 29th of the month every month since November.
So I'm not happy with their idiocy but it forced me to try T-mobile.
I've found that in most places T-mobile works better than vodafone - I seem to have a 3G signal in more places and more consistently. however, that means that my E65 only lasts barely a day....With vodafone's 3G constantly dropping most of the time I was on 2G...haha, funny that!!
I think the 2/2.5G signal of vodafone is better. The 3G T-mobile signal is better. At least where i go. T-mobile reaches deep into the basement of my law school, whereas vodafone could only reach 2feet into the area.
Vodafone pluses:
includes voicemail to mins
Much cheaper fixed rate roaming not per minute
Robust 2G network
competitive plans.
T-mobile plusses:
1GB data
Much better 3G network.
-ves:
Charge for voicemail
Expensive roaming.
Less good 2G network.
Quite expensive tariffs and phones.
Virgin pluses:
Cheapest deal with mins+phone for free without going ot reseller.
T-mobile network
-ves:
unknown newbie - reseller.
Data capped at 384.
I was on a T-Mobile Combi 30 + W'n'W for £35 a month (18 month contract, 600mins/unlimited txts) plan, when it came time to upgrade a fortnight ago they wanted £70 for the phone, which I would happily have paid. Fortunately they didn't have any in stock at the time. I say fortunately as another rep called me back about a week later and proposed I go on the Flext 35 for 18 months, which has a £180 per month allowance (plus internet) but the phone is free, since I never use anywhere near my minutes, or send millions of txts it's a good plan for me, plus free HD2!
The phone comes without any T-Mobile graffiti on it thankfully, and since HardSPL was released, the stock branded T-Mobile ROM lasted all of an hour.
Also really depends in which country you reside.
Vodafone NL never warned me for over-usage, while I had months exceeding 500MB PER SESSION.. Never heard from them.
Speed is about 1mbit/s here at home. Signal is good in most cases. On the highway I usually get 2mbit/s.
May be slightly off topic but anyone else using this phone with Virgin and having issues with connection?
Mine says 3g sometimes but then reverts to H or even G. Also having issues at work where coverage is supposed to be good but there are times I'm not getting any signal at all. Did try the sim in anoether phone and the signal was strong so wondering if its the phone.
Thanks in advance!
Towserspvm2000 said:
O2 work out quite a bit more than the others - you pay £100 for the HD2 on a £35/month contract, with 600 minutes talk and 1000 texts (if you order over the internet - 500 texts if you do the deal in store). This comes with the Unlimited Web bolt on (which normally costs £7.50), but this is limited to 500mb. And it seems you are charged if you go over this.
I've never dealt with O2, so my apologies if the info is wrong, but this is how I'm finding it.
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Hi im new here, thought i would register as i have my new leo coming 2morrow, cant wait. I ordered a hd2 from o2 today, unlimited txts, unlimited web, 600 xnet mins free phone 18 month contract for £35pm. had to ring up and say i was going to leave if they couldent match the deal they were very friendly. t-mobile and voda do the same sort of deals on dialafone n places like that.
Duddy1986 said:
Hi im new here, thought i would register as i have my new leo coming 2morrow, cant wait. I ordered a hd2 from o2 today, unlimited txts, unlimited web, 600 xnet mins free phone 18 month contract for £35pm. had to ring up and say i was going to leave if they couldent match the deal they were very friendly. t-mobile and voda do the same sort of deals on dialafone n places like that.
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Welcome to the group!! Hope the phone is what you want. You will be in for a steep learning curve, but this is the best forum group to ask questions in.
I was just wondering what the opinions of T-mobile was for the members here. I have been on a Radioshack/AT&T employee plan since 2006 and even though I quit in 2008 I have continued to be on this plan. It was amazing (2000 minutes, unlimited text, and unlimited data for $25 a month), however I just received notice today from my old AT&T rep that I will finally be taken off it. I am currently looking at switching to one of the major US carriers and am looking at the plan prices. I want to stick with an Android phone, so I'll need data. Verizon's cheapest plan looks to be $89.99/month for what I want (450 minutes, unlimited text, 2GB of data), with AT&T and Sprint's around $10 cheaper. I rarely use minutes (average of 250 a month), but I text quite a bit so I would want unlimited text. I also don't use data much. My max in the past year has been 134MB, however I know if I have a faster phone I will probably use data more. I was looking at T-mobile's plans and noticed they are drastically cheaper. $49.99/month for 500 minutes, unlimited text, and 2GB of data. Is their service much worse than AT&T, even though they are both GSM? I'd hate to switch to them and end up hating my service.
So in short, does anybody who has had AT&T and T-mobile notice a major difference between the two? Would I be better with sticking with Verizon or AT&T or are they all about equal nowadays?
Thanks in advance!
I recommend you buy an unlocked phone (hello Nexus!) and get a sim card from Straight Talk. They are a MVNO that runs on the AT&T network. I believe plans are $45.
It always depends on your area. For years I used Cingular(now At&t) and I had pretty decent service. About 5 years ago, T-Mobile was carrying a phone I wanted, so I decided to switch. (This was before I knew about the glory of unlocking ;P). T-Mobile's network was so horrible I never (read:NEVER) got service within a 2 mile radius of my home, and about the same at work.
I couldn't make a phone call with out it dropping, so I was forced to switch back to At&t. The guy at T-Mobile pulled up a "coverage map" and it claimed I should have the best service right in the area I needed it. So it was a bunch of bull if you ask me.
My suggestion has always been to talk to people who you know in the area of where you will be using your phone. I know some people from around my area who get great reception with T-Mobile and get awful service with At&t. I honestly have no idea how it happens, but it does.
Another route would be to get the phone to test (perhaps one of their pre-paid, no contract options?) and use it for a few days. If you are unhappy, simply return it. If you are returning it because of bad coverage they HAVE to take it back and give you a full refund.
I still think the asking people around the area is the best option. Perhaps you could give a general location, and ask people on the forums who are located near by to give you some of their opinions on their coverage? Its probably the best way to be sure, if you ask me.
T-Mobile was great to me in the East Bay area of northern California, until last November, when they instituted traffic-shaping policies that meant every single JPEG image on the internet was horribly compressed into an ugly mess of artifacts and banded gradients.
I really miss T-Mobile's HSPA+ speed. AT&T just can't quite get as fast. But I'll take a 20-25% slower connection that isn't adulterated over a faster one that's been tampered with.
I've had ok experiences with T-Mobile. When I lived in Atlanta there were many areas where I simply didn't get a signal, but that's probably due to to the terrain. As suggested you should probably ask others in the area where you will be how their coverage is. In regards to plans, I'm on a contracted unlimited talk/text, 2GB data for $90. I'll be modifying that at the soonest opportunity... I guess at least the phone itself was cheaper at the time :/
Thanks for info!
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Failure to comply with forum rules will result in an infraction and/or ban depending on severity of rule break.
I've had T-Mobile for a few years now, and I can't wait to leave this company. I'm currently in the process of jumping ship. I've driven from California to Tennessee, Tennessee to Iowa, Iowa to Michigan, and back again. I've never seen such garbage coverage from a cellular company. I have a 4G compatible phone, but I've only ever seen 4G when I fly through Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Their 3G coverage area is also terrible.
So, Cons are as follows:
4G: What 4G?
3G: Doesn't exist
2G: Covers the entire country with data speeds barely faster than dial-up, unless you live more than 25 miles outside a big city, or in North Dakota in general.
Reception: It's a well known fact that T-Mobile cannot maintain or even guarantee any sort of standard level of service indoors.
Pros:
Pricing: They are cheap for a reason.
"Unlimited" Data Plans: They "throttle" them after a certain amount of time, and it's throttling to less than 2G speeds. In fact, you should try being throttled while trying to drive across the country using Google maps...
Customer Service: The only pleasant part of my time with T-Mobile.
cdchris12 said:
I've had T-Mobile for a few years now, and I can't wait to leave this company. I'm currently in the process of jumping ship. I've driven from California to Tennessee, Tennessee to Iowa, Iowa to Michigan, and back again. I've never seen such garbage coverage from a cellular company. I have a 4G compatible phone, but I've only ever seen 4G when I fly through Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Their 3G coverage area is also terrible.
So, Cons are as follows:
4G: What 4G?
3G: Doesn't exist
2G: Covers the entire country with data speeds barely faster than dial-up, unless you live more than 25 miles outside a big city, or in North Dakota in general.
Reception: It's a well known fact that T-Mobile cannot maintain or even guarantee any sort of standard level of service indoors.
Pros:
Pricing: They are cheap for a reason.
"Unlimited" Data Plans: They "throttle" them after a certain amount of time, and it's throttling to less than 2G speeds. In fact, you should try being throttled while trying to drive across the country using Google maps...
Customer Service: The only pleasant part of my time with T-Mobile.
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Those may have been YOUR experiences and I'm not discounting that BUT....
I have FIVE LINES with T-Mobile
NEVER HAVE I HAD an issue with signal or coverage indoors.
Full bars in my home, excellent signal (68dBm-72dBm).
Very good coverage in Jersey City, NJ where I live.
My husband whom travels all over the tri-state area (NY,NJ,CT) doesn't have any reception issues either.
Fast HSPA+ (yes, it's a 3.5G technology) speeds depending on the device used. (I have the Amaze,,Sensation and, a Nexus S on T-Mobile ATM)
Wasn't me!! I didn't do it!
I completely disagree with cdchris12 however I always lived in area with good T-Mobile coverage and their throttle speed is fast enough to view website and use Google Maps. I do find that depends on the phone, usually older ones can have problem keeping data and gps in door, unless you're next to a window. With newer big phones with good antenna is not so much a problem.
I'd say get an unlocked phone and go with T-Mobile prepaid $50/month plan which give you unlimited everything and throttle to 2G after 2GB of usage. Unless you need roaming which isn't available with prepaid. I have family and friends who use ATT 3G and T-Mobile 3G network is always faster to me. In fact, with a Galaxy SII with dual HSPA+ antenna I get speed excess of 20mbps. Straight Talk has the same plan for $45 I believe and they go through T-Mobile network.
T-Mobile also allows you to tether which ATT don't, although recently I heard they changed that for people with $70 plan.
You might also find this useful: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=21604722&postcount=2
To get T-Mobile 3G you need a phone that support 1700/2100Mhz band.
In the East Bay area T-Mobile's HSPA+ speeds are really quite fast. I often saw 8-9Mbps downstream on my Galaxy Nexus before I switched to AT&T.
Unfortunately a fast internet connection is useless if your carrier alters all images on the internet so everything looks like dogpoo.
I have no idea what you are talking about, you might be accessing website through some kind of proxy like Opera Mini/Turbo. I know you will reply that that isn't the case, but I really can't think why that would be the case, but it has to be through some kind of proxy. I also notice some roms are set to connect to SimpleMobile by default instead of T-Mobile, which also causes problems. With Opera Mobile using desktop user agent, it looks exactly like my PC, and I've tried 5 different Android phones with T-Mobile. I haven't heard of millions other T-Mobile users complaining about degrading pictures quality from browser.
eksasol said:
I have no idea what you are talking about, you might be accessing website through some kind of proxy like Opera Mini/Turbo. I know you will reply that that isn't the case, but I really can't think why that would be the case, but it has to be through some kind of proxy. I also notice some roms are set to connect to SimpleMobile by default instead of T-Mobile, which also causes problems. With Opera Mobile using desktop user agent, it looks exactly like my PC, and I've tried 5 different Android phones with T-Mobile. I haven't heard of millions other T-Mobile users complaining about degrading pictures quality from browser.
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It's a proxy, but the proxy is on T-Mobile's end, not mine. It's a transparent proxy and it works exactly like the Opera Mini proxy, but I can't choose to turn it off. Connecting through a VPN would obviously fix the problem, but there's no easy way to force Android to auto-connect to a VPN every time I open the browser.
Trust me, I was thorough. The user agent wasn't an issue. The APN was set correctly. I spent over ten hours on the phone with T-Mobile's technical support and I hard reset the phones on both lines multiple times, restored to unrooted stock multiple times, and nothing fixed the issue. When I bought my Galaxy Nexus, I tested it before unlocking the bootloader and rooting it, and had the same exact issue.
Just to be absolutely sure, I even tested the issue on an iOS device (iPhone 3GS) and a WP7 device (HD7) with the same results--heavily compressed JPEG images when viewing any unencrypted page.
It no longer matters since I left T-Mobile for AT&T, which uses no such proxy.
Edit: I should note that I'm not the only one with this problem. Every person I know in the SF Bay area who uses T-Mobile has this problem. It may be automatic traffic shaping algorithms used on a tower-by-tower basis (which would explain why some people don't have the problem), but yeah, it's all over the place here. I tested demo phones in every T-Mobile store I could easily reach in the area--three in SF, two in Oakland, one in Berkeley and one in El Cerrito, and they all exhibit the same problem.
For example:
Actual quality, downloaded over wifi (180kb)
Very low quality, downloaded over T-Mobile 3G (55kb)
Yea, the compression thing on TMo is a well known thing. It doesn't bother me personally.
To throw in my experience with AT&T/T-Mobile here, I review phones as a side project. I've noted several differences in the two networks. Most are well known things that others have commented on. T-Mobile EASILY has better customer service. They always have. They pride themselves in their outstanding customer care. As long as you aren't being retarded or yelling at them, they will do everything possible to make you a happy customer.
As far as coverage goes, check the maps. AT&T has a bigger network footprint. T-Mobile has better network speeds. I get better speeds on T-Mobile 3G than on AT&T LTE. Obviously this is very dependent on location, but that's how it is here.
If you have coverage from T-Mobile and don't mind the picture compression, I strongly suggest it. I lived without 3G from T-Mobile for 2 and a half years while I was in the Army on base in Georgia. EDGE speeds are respectable from them. Their customer service and my ridiculously old $50 unlimited everything plan kept me going.
T-Mobile does throttle users once you reach your limits. I've never been throttled personally, but I've maxed out a test SGS2 just to see what it's like. You are still able to browse the web. No videos or streaming music, though. Speed tests put the throttling at around 70-110 Kbps. This is within EDGE speeds. Their unthrottled EDGE speeds are between 160-320 Kbps here. By comparison, GPRS speed drops down to about 20-40 Kbps.
My preference is for good customer service. T-Mobile has always been there for me, even when things got tight for me. I see no reason to leave them now. Look at the news just within the last 6 months. AT&T couldn't care less about its customers. It doesn't change anything until it gets sued.
cajunflavoredbob said:
Yea, the compression thing on TMo is a well known thing. It doesn't bother me personally.
To throw in my experience with AT&T/T-Mobile here, I review phones as a side project. I've noted several differences in the two networks. Most are well known things that others have commented on. T-Mobile EASILY has better customer service. They always have. They pride themselves in their outstanding customer care. As long as you aren't being retarded or yelling at them, they will do everything possible to make you a happy customer.
As far as coverage goes, check the maps. AT&T has a bigger network footprint. T-Mobile has better network speeds. I get better speeds on T-Mobile 3G than on AT&T LTE. Obviously this is very dependent on location, but that's how it is here.
If you have coverage from T-Mobile and don't mind the picture compression, I strongly suggest it. I lived without 3G from T-Mobile for 2 and a half years while I was in the Army on base in Georgia. EDGE speeds are respectable from them. Their customer service and my ridiculously old $50 unlimited everything plan kept me going.
T-Mobile does throttle users once you reach your limits. I've never been throttled personally, but I've maxed out a test SGS2 just to see what it's like. You are still able to browse the web. No videos or streaming music, though. Speed tests put the throttling at around 70-110 Kbps. This is within EDGE speeds. Their unthrottled EDGE speeds are between 160-320 Kbps here. By comparison, GPRS speed drops down to about 20-40 Kbps.
My preference is for good customer service. T-Mobile has always been there for me, even when things got tight for me. I see no reason to leave them now. Look at the news just within the last 6 months. AT&T couldn't care less about its customers. It doesn't change anything until it gets sued.
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This^^^^ %110. That being said, I've only experienced image compression in NYC, in a few areas (mostly midtown Manhattan). I live in Jersey City, NJ and haven't experienced it here. Even with image compression, images don't look THAT BAD....at least IMO.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk
Babydoll25 said:
This^^^^ %110. That being said, I've only experienced image compression in NYC, in a few areas (mostly midtown Manhattan). I live in Jersey City, NJ and haven't experienced it here. Even with image compression, images don't look THAT BAD....at least IMO.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk
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For me, they looked so bad I was willing to pay $40 more a month to AT&T in order to make it go away permanently. The other line on my account is used by my partner, and she would frequently read manga raws on her phone. When the image compression started, the Japanese characters in the raw manga scans became totally illegible. She was, to put it mildly, rather upset. This is probably 90% of why she owns a smartphone and is willing to pay for it, so I'm sure you can see the issue here.
For me it was an aesthetic issue, but for her it was a functionality issue. In any case, we pay a little more a month, but we also get more--and I personally prefer AT&T's method of handling data. At least on AT&T if I want more than 3GB a month I can pay to get extra GBs. On T-Mobile, you'd get throttled regardless and EDGE in the East Bay is completely unusable.
I would have stayed with T-Mobile had I been able to figure out how to automatically log into a VPN every time I opened an app that pulled image assets from the web (the browser, the Android Market, etc). Unfortunately, the only solution I found also wakelocked the phone permanently, preventing it from sleeping and killing any semblance of good battery life.
synaesthetic said:
For me, they looked so bad I was willing to pay $40 more a month to AT&T in order to make it go away permanently. The other line on my account is used by my partner, and she would frequently read manga raws on her phone. When the image compression started, the Japanese characters in the raw manga scans became totally illegible. She was, to put it mildly, rather upset. This is probably 90% of why she owns a smartphone and is willing to pay for it, so I'm sure you can see the issue here.
For me it was an aesthetic issue, but for her it was a functionality issue. In any case, we pay a little more a month, but we also get more--and I personally prefer AT&T's method of handling data. At least on AT&T if I want more than 3GB a month I can pay to get extra GBs. On T-Mobile, you'd get throttled regardless and EDGE in the East Bay is completely unusable.
I would have stayed with T-Mobile had I been able to figure out how to automatically log into a VPN every time I opened an app that pulled image assets from the web (the browser, the Android Market, etc). Unfortunately, the only solution I found also wakelocked the phone permanently, preventing it from sleeping and killing any semblance of good battery life.
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I think that's the main problem with the way TMo handles it. It's not consistent. It seems to be worse based on location and usage. More compression in more populated areas or something. For me, I can tell that the images are compressed if I zoom in inside a webpage, but otherwise, it's business as usual.
Same with the data speeds. A lot of people say that it drops to regular GPRS speeds when they get throttled. I only tested it the one time with that review unit SGS2, but it wasn't that bad. 100Kbps is fine for web browsing. The problem seems to be that it's all very much a "your mileage may vary" situation.
AT&T is evil, but at least they are consistent.
They're all evil. We simply pick the lesser evil in any given location.
I'm kind of surprised that nobody's mentioned T-Mobile's Wifi Calling. It allows you to get service anywhere that has a Wifi network available, and you can do everything as normal (Call, text, internet) through your plan. I use it everyday, and I think it's great.
theholyfork said:
I'm kind of surprised that nobody's mentioned T-Mobile's Wifi Calling. It allows you to get service anywhere that has a Wifi network available, and you can do everything as normal (Call, text, internet) through your plan. I use it everyday, and I think it's great.
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It's nice to have, but kind of crappy that it still counts against you, even though you aren't using their towers...
Looks like John Legere just said, "hahaha sucka.. you've been baited to our unlimited data cap"
It has come to our attention over the past few days – thanks to a couple of our readers – that T-Mobile has changed the fine print to its unlimited 4G LTE Simple Choice plans. Head on over to the individual plans or family plans page on T-Mobile’s website and you’ll see the following short line added at the bottom of the page:
“*Unlimited 4G LTE customers who use more than 21 GB of data in a bill cycle will have their data usage de-prioritized compared to other customers for that bill cycle at locations and times when competing network demands occur, resulting in relatively slower speeds.”
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http://www.tmonews.com/2015/06/21gb...mobiles-unlimited-4g-lte-simple-choice-plans/
What are you thoughts?
I avg 35-45gb a month. But how do we know if our area is congested?
Legere has been bashing other companies about their throttle, but yet he's doing the same thing.
twe90kid said:
What are you thoughts?
I avg 35-45gb a month.
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What and how much are you downloading?
twe90kid said:
Looks like John Legere just said, "hahaha sucka.. you've been baited to our unlimited data cap"
http://www.tmonews.com/2015/06/21gb...mobiles-unlimited-4g-lte-simple-choice-plans/
What are you thoughts?
I avg 35-45gb a month. But how do we know if our area is congested?
Legere has been bashing other companies about their throttle, but yet he's doing the same thing.
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Not trying to pick a fight, but I'd like to hear how you consistently use that much data on your phone. I'd consider myself a heavy user, and I do break the tethering rules a few times a week, and I don't think I've ever passed 20GB in a month.
ummduh said:
Not trying to pick a fight, but I'd like to hear how you consistently use that much data on your phone. I'd consider myself a heavy user, and I do break the tethering rules a few times a week, and I don't think I've ever passed 20GB in a month.
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A fight it is, lol. But seriously is not about how much data someone's uses but if this is true then it's the fact that John goes around bashing AT&T and Verizon but then pulls this $hit. How much data you use is non of my business but have you ever watch a 5 min YouTube video in 1080 or 1440? There goes about half a Gb.
ummduh said:
Not trying to pick a fight, but I'd like to hear how you consistently use that much data on your phone. I'd consider myself a heavy user, and I do break the tethering rules a few times a week, and I don't think I've ever passed 20GB in a month.
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Breaking 30 - 40 GB is easy depending where you are. Last year I took a family vacation to Disney World and forgot to bring my laptop to store each days videos and pictures. At the time I had a G3 and wife had a Note 3.
At the end of the day our phones would be out of storage when recording videos in 4K and taking pictures in max resolution. Our only two options for making storage space available was to either buy storage for our phones or to upload everything to google drive, dropbox, youtube, box .... Having the unlimited dataplan, why not use it and just upload everything each night so we can clear our phones the next day. Doing this over five days four nights we used over 80 GB of data combined (all videos ended up on youtube while phones were saved in the cloud.
We are going to Disney and Universal in a couple weeks and I plan on doing this again. Outside of special occasions like this, I think we used between 6 and 10 GB combined a month.
moehagene said:
Breaking 30 - 40 GB is easy depending where you are. Last year I took a family vacation to Disney World and forgot to bring my laptop to store each days videos and pictures. At the time I had a G3 and wife had a Note 3.
At the end of the day our phones would be out of storage when recording videos in 4K and taking pictures in max resolution. Our only two options for making storage space available was to either buy storage for our phones or to upload everything to google drive, dropbox, youtube, box .... Having the unlimited dataplan, why not use it and just upload everything each night so we can clear our phones the next day. Doing this over five days four nights we used over 80 GB of data combined (all videos ended up on youtube while phones were saved in the cloud.
We are going to Disney and Universal in a couple weeks and I plan on doing this again. Outside of special occasions like this, I think we used between 6 and 10 GB combined a month.
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Yup.
With a rooted phone and having xposed. My youtube is set to play 1440P as long as it's available.
I also upload my 4k videos that I record at car events.
Photos that you take are about 5mb each (16mp).
Just streaming music and video daily will easily eat 21 GB in less than two weeks. I have a feeling this might get repealed or changed to 31. At least that's a gig a day. It's kinda hypocritical like people have said. There's some interesting comments on tmonews under the article. This will really screw the commuters in big cities plus those who listen to music or videos via headphones at work etc. I guess we really need to see how it goes because there are a few unanswered questions here like what are the peak times and if this changes from tower to tower after depriorization. We'll have to just see how this affects people.
sino8r said:
Just streaming music and video daily will easily eat 21 GB in less than two weeks. I have a feeling this might get repealed or changed to 31. At least that's a gig a day. It's kinda hypocritical like people have said. There's some interesting comments on tmonews under the article. This will really screw the commuters in big cities plus those who listen to music or videos via headphones at work etc. I guess we really need to see how it goes because there are a few unanswered questions here like what are the peak times and if this changes from tower to tower after depriorization. We'll have to just see how this affects people.
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I still like to know what the deprioritize speed is.. for example, if you hit 21gb. And your in a congested area, what speed are you capped at? 1mbps? 5mbps? 10mbps?
Also, does it mean that if we jump from one network to another network, the prioritizing stops? What happens if we go back to the original network, does it start again?
twe90kid said:
I still like to know what the deprioritize speed is.. for example, if you hit 21gb. And your in a congested area, what speed are you capped at? 1mbps? 5mbps? 10mbps?
Also, does it mean that if we jump from one network to another network, the prioritizing stops? What happens if we go back to the original network, does it start again?
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Exactly... Not sure. Some people in the comments on tmonews are clarifying some of those concerns. But really it just seems like speculation so far. I guess we'll see... Not really happy about this myself.
I wouldn't get too upset about it. A good network always has a QOS system in place.
Note that the statement says 'de-prioritized', not throttled. Instead of assigning your account to a lower bandwidth speed, you could be placed in a lower tier in a packet queuing scheduler. This doesn't necessarily limit your bandwidth, it just lets other user's packets go first. When an area is 100% congested, your 'share' of the bandwidth will be less than others. Once there is free network capacity your bandwidth would go back to normal as there would be enough free resources to do so. Realize that network saturation changes by the second, so unless a congested area is constantly overloaded at 100% capacity, you shouldn't experience much speed reduction.
This is completely within the new FCC rules, and is actually a good network management practice.
xanmato said:
I wouldn't get too upset about it. A good network always has a QOS system in place.
Note that the statement says 'de-prioritized', not throttled. Instead of assigning your account to a lower bandwidth speed, you could be placed in a lower tier in a packet queuing scheduler. This doesn't necessarily limit your bandwidth, it just lets other user's packets go first. When an area is 100% congested, your 'share' of the bandwidth will be less than others. Once there is free network capacity your bandwidth would go back to normal as there would be enough free resources to do so. Realize that network saturation changes by the second, so unless a congested area is constantly overloaded at 100% capacity, you shouldn't experience much speed reduction.
This is completely within the new FCC rules, and is actually a good network management practice.
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Yeah it's good in theory (compared to plain throttling) but we haven't really seen it in practical application so far. I live in medium sized city (300 thousand city/1 million metro) and don't have much to worry about really. I have WiFi at work/home and no real excuse to use 60GB a month like I do. Just bad habits. I just have to remember to leave WiFi on lol! No biggie for me. The folks I feel bad for is those who work outside or have no WiFi in office (other than work purposes. Strick company policy a holes etc) and/or commuters that have to ride the subway. I don't really feel sorry for those (and I have a few friends like this) that are too cheap to buy broadband Internet at home. This isn't meant to be a replacement for home Internet unless you have a Hotspot device or whatever they call it these days. I get that. I guess we'll have to see. This plan has been in place a few weeks now. We'll have to see how much it affects people. Hopefully not too much. Good reply though! Clarification is always welcome here:good:
sino8r said:
Yeah it's good in theory (compared to plain throttling) but we haven't really seen it in practical application so far.
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Well, until we get some technical info or some really good test results, we won't know exactly what they are using. Though priority queuing and class based queuing are common in today's networks. I can guarantee they are already using hierarchical fair service curves as it is pretty much required for the HD voice feature to be reliable.
If this system is already in place, then they probably are not using regular throttling tiers, as I am well past the soft cap and am still putting down 80/20 speed. Though I am most likely in an un-congested area. I am wondering just how weighted the de-prioritization scale is for users above the cap.
I use alot of data (70gb) one month that was the most extreme. I download alot of movies and torrents while i sleep. Theres know doubt in my mind that they mess with my speeds especially during peak hours. I with search and get lte then 5 seconds later it drops down. I will search and get it again and the same thing will happen. Meanwhile my wifes phone stays on lte. I also noticed at times ill be on lte but will only be downloading at 100 or 200 kbs where im normally at 1 mbs. But like i said it's usually only at peak hours and lasts for 30min to a hour
twe90kid said:
Looks like John Legere just said, "hahaha sucka.. you've been baited to our unlimited data cap"
http://www.tmonews.com/2015/06/21gb...mobiles-unlimited-4g-lte-simple-choice-plans/
What are you thoughts?
I avg 35-45gb a month. But how do we know if our area is congested?
Legere has been bashing other companies about their throttle, but yet he's doing the same thing.
Click to expand...
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Wait, this is just now making news? That's been in their fine print for almost a year now ever since they started their unlimited data campaign.
I average about 150-200GBs a month on my line alone. I really heavily on my phones data for everything I do while I'm not at home. Sometimes even when I'm home I'll use data just for the heck of it.
T-Mobile is throttling but not as rampant as the other carriers. T-Mobile's throttling depends on network congestion. Other carriers just throttle once you hit a certain number.
There really isn't a way to tell though if your area is heavily congested unless it's a major city; i.e Denver Metro, Manhattan, LA, etc etc.
I am very torn by this as I live in a congested neighborhood that this cap is designed to manage. The tower that serves my neighborhood is oversold. I routinely suffer from slow network speeds on the best of days and I personally have never used enough data to hit the cap. So on one hand, I certainly want my fellow users capped if they are data hogs as bandwidth is very constrained in my local neck of the woods. On the other hand, because my tower is so congested, if I did hit the cap and was de-prioritized, I would immediately hit 2G speeds because there is so much traffic to compete with. So T-Mobile has essentially told me that I have a 21GB data plan as in my neighborhood I will never get more.
With that figure in mind, I have to say that a 15GB plan from Verizon that actually would give me decent speed now seems not so far off from my 21GB "unlimited" plan. T-Mobile is supposed to be adding bandwidth in my neighborhood, but it is no longer a comparison of XGB vs unlimited, but XGB vs 21GB. Verizon and for that matter, Sprint (yes, I know) are offering competitive packages to 21GB and it is possible that even Sprint may give me faster speeds. I am not so sure that I may not make the jump to someone if they can deliver better speeds. For those that live in non-congested neighborhoods, that 21GB cap may never be seen. But in my area, that is a wall.
They are doing what Verizon started doing. Throttling only on congested towers to the top data people. I use to get throttled by Verizon when the Detroit Lions or the Tigers were playing since I work downtown Detroit. Once the games were done I would get better data speeds.
Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
Using over 80gb a month is taking advantage of a good thing. People who consistently abuse the data limits are the same people who screwed this for everyone. These are the people who feel entitled to abuse every inch they can. Hotels have wifi, there are other ways. I have the unlimited data package fir years, never abused the privilege. Whenever at home I use my wifi even though I have sick DL speeds at home. I will never abuse a situation, just the way I am.
Sent from my Note 4.
So sorry that us heavy users misunderstood what unlimited means. Dangit I knew I should have paid more attention in vocabulary class.
Now I just need to remember not to buy that nice car I want because that would taking advantage of a good thing as others aren't buying it.
Not to step on anyone posting, but I believe that T-Mobile is at fault here. Notwithstanding the individuals that break the rules and tether more than the rules allow, T-Mobile sold me an unlimited plan. I have not exceeded the 21GB limit. My data, according to T-Mobile, is at 11GB. But when I subscribed to the unlimited plan, I asked what that meant and I gave some far out there examples (streaming videos 24 hours a day, etc.). I was told by the T-Mobile customer rep, unlimited means unlimited. No sweat.
The problem is that T-Mobile wanted to attract more business and they used and still use unlimited data plans to attract that business and their network wasn't really ready for that level of activity. I read comments to an article as much as 6 months ago that had users saying that T-Mobile's network was, unlike the other carrier's networks, impervious to slowdowns from added traffic which is simply not true.
But I believe T-Mobile has helped build that impression with the selling all of these unlimited data packages. TMONews had an article a couple of weeks ago asking if unlimited data packages are going away and they quoted John Legere saying that unlimited data packages are only guaranteed for 2 more years. (http://www.tmonews.com/2015/05/is-unlimited-data-going-to-disappear/) Then shortly after they announced this cap. The article's point is that unlimited packages are unsustainable. But T-Mobile keeps selling the idea. All carrier's need to sell what they can provide and not promise more than they can deliver. Perhaps they should say no to a new customer that lives in a neighborhood that is oversold. But they won't.
I love T-Mobile, but I experience very slow speeds due to a wildly oversold network. I would have been much better off if T-Mobile only promised what they can deliver. They can't really deliver unlimited to me. What they told me last week is that unlimited is actually 21GB, if you could get 21GB at the slow download speeds they are currently delivering. For the fellow that got 80GB, if he followed the rules, he is paying for an unlimited plan. In my neighborhood, except for DSL that is unusably slow, I have no other options except wireless. No cable, nothing. I am willing to pay for my data needs. But I want and need the data at reasonably fast speeds. It is not clear that in my neighborhood that T-Mobile can deliver. But now that the cap is in place, T-Mobile has made the comparison clearer. Who can deliver 21GB faster, cheaper and more reliably than anyone else. Because in my oversold neighborhood, 21GB is all that I will get. YMMV.
Good luck finding another carrier that will only delay your packets after 21gb when there is congestion instead of crippling access all together. Your situation is unique and the result should be expected. There is nothing a carrier can do if your area is under serviced when it comes to internet access. xanmato completely gets the concept here. This is not a cap, even calling it a soft cap is a bit much. This is Quality of Service (QOS) at its best and T-Mobile shouldnt be slammed for doing this. Just because its unlimited doesn't mean you can go ahead and use it as your sole internet source for everything you ever do. That was never its intended purpose. If everyone used 80gb a month it would cripple any cellular network unless the heavy users had some kind of consequence and maybe make them use their wifi for once. Maybe in the future the cell network or whatever comes after that will be robust enough to handle everyone using large amounts of bandwidth at once but until then we have to respect the fact that a cellular carrier is not the same thing as an ISP