No caps. No fair-use...
But presumably severe throttling and traffic shaping if you go over some undisclosed limit of their choosing.
T-Mobile announced a new flagship smartphone tariff this morning, aimed at first-time users who want to pay a single sub and no additional data charges. The Full Monty package is, the cellco claimed, the first tariff of its kind to offer a truly unlimited deal with no fair use policy. Customers who sign up will get unlimited …
A couple of years back I complained to the Advertising Standards Agency about an advert for an "Unlimited" mobile data plan that stated in the small print that it was limited to 500MB per month. They rejected the complaint saying that it was fine to advertise a limited service as unlimited provided those limits were fair use limits.
I agree the ASA's rationale, there as elsewhere sometimes, is kaput.
The question is, what is the process whereby the ASA may be complained about?
Years ago I wrote to them about some awful finance company punting 5000% interest loans, with examples/workings-out hugely at variance with the actual interest rate. The ASA person - totally innumerate - wrote back to say it sounded like the right interest rate, and they wouldn't regulate the communique anyway because that was for the FSA (neither true - it wasn't a company which subscribed to the FSA). A year later people were making documentaries about this same heinous company.
So: who regulates the regulators?
How long before unlimited is not unlimited after all. They can't give truly unlimited as a few people will abuse it and use 95% of the capacity on the network. As someone who uses a more normal amount of data I would much rather a mobile company that said I got xGb and gave me xGb at a good speed.
There is a cost to these calls and data - so unlimited means lighter users will end up subsidising the heaver ones or suffering poorer performance etc.
Three ACs saying essentially the same thing? Odd.
Anyway Three has also done an unlimited tariff for a good while now, on exactly the same 3G network (T-Mobile and Three oth operate on the MBNL network), no caps or restrictions - I routinely use over 10GB a month - and no one has melted the network.
Works as well as any other and costs have not gone up. Stop with your scaremongering.
I cannot understand why so many people have started to think like this. If a customer has paid for an unlimited service, there is no such thing as "abusing it". If the infrastructure is incapable of handling unlimited data then the provider should not sell 'unlimited' packages, simple.
It's still throttled.
Unless you've discovered a way to substantially increase the water pressure at the point of entry (and assuming your plumbing can handle it), you're always limited to the volume of water the supplier can feed into your house over time (i.e. your "bandwidth"). How long does it take to fill a bath with the taps fully opened? That's your "water bandwidth". If you want to fill your bath up more quickly, you _will_ be expected to pay more for the privilege.
Industrial businesses that have to run water-reliant processes pay big bucks to have lots and lots of water available when they need it. It's substantially more than you get at your front door.
So, yes, you are being limited. Turn all your taps on and measure the quantity of water that comes out per day. That's your daily ration. It _is_ limited. Inherently so.
David - If Shaun like me is in Scotland, then yes he could fill a swimming pool or run the sprinklers without Scottish Water (the water supplier, a mutual company) giving a crap, only time they would bother would be in a PROLONGED drought, which given that its Scotland we have reasonably large reservoirs isnt likely to occur.
Sean - Sorry your talking bollocks, my water pipe = the fastest the water network can supply me with given the thickness of pipe, which is a pretty high flow rate (~20+ ltr per min domestic supply) mainly as I sit on the flat and the reservoir is at the top of a large hill. Ergo the same as for the mobile network depending on the location determines the speed I receive, If I wanted more speed then internet wise I'd be talking going to wired networking and for water I'd be talking an increase in the bore of the mains pipe or building massive storage tanks on site and pumping water to the needed pressure. The water company do not decrease my water pressure, I get full mains pressure.
Similar to my broadband I'm limited by the throughput of my connection, however I have no limit set by the supplier, if they upped the pressure / cfm for my water then I could draw off more or if my exchange got upgraded to boost my throughput then I could download more. Real throttling would be "You've run 2 baths worth of water so we are reducing your water pressure by 90% for the rest of the day/week/year" THAT would be throttling
Technical limitations != Throttling
Yet I get flat rate internet data and have done for longer than I remember, at least back to the 14400 dialup modem era! bandwidth is the ultimate perishable product, gone instantly whether used or not with low incremental cost. That makes unmetered a viable choice unlike the physical products you list.
Whether the explicitly throttle or just let contention limit use automatically remains to be seen.
Your description may be true for the last mile where you have a connexion dedicated to your sole use. But the core network, to be economic, runs with a shared load at a significant fraction of its maximum capacity. This is true even of purely terrestrial networks, doubly so for mobile ones. It only needs a few users who refuse to 'play nicely' to cause problems with this model.
That T'Mobile (the worlds only Northern telco) has such a poor range of phones atm. I was looking to switch networks earlier this month and their big headline announcement was the Playbook. No sign of anything remotely new from the network itself, you had to rely on third party resellers, which for various reasons I didn't want to.
"you had to rely on third party resellers, which for various reasons I didn't want to"
I'd much rather but the phone myself (not locked to any network) and get a SIM only deal from the mobile company - you choose when to upgrade and most of the SIM only deals are a lot cheaper as you are not subsidising the cost of the handset.
Also many SIM only deals are just 30 day or 12 month contracts - gives you a lot more flexibility if you decided to switch network as well.
"No it doesn't"
Oh yes it does - all networks eventually find that 10% of their users consume 90% of the data - so 90% of the users are paying more or suffering potentially slower performance as a result.
If that were not true you are saying that by ditching the 10% of heaviest users a network would not be able to reduce prices or give consistently faster performance.
Not so if you have a decent network from the get go.
Be has been doing unlimited broadband plans since 2004 without having to ditch anything near the top 10% of users, actually not sure if they ditched any at all - even if they reserve the right to do so for extreme cases after multiple warnings.
1st? giffgaff dropped their umlimited everything £35 tariff more than a year ago, after crooks realised they could resell minutes and make a tidy profit. Hopefully T mobile will be proactive enough to avoid that problem or this product is on shaky ground.
That said, the carrier is much better able to handle the costs of that scam than an MVNO paying pro rata for the usage and if restricted to contract more able to find the culprits.
Given that this lot are now in cahoots with the paragon of mobile phone honesty and customer support that is Orange - my suggestion to anyone contemplating this would be to be very very careful and read the contracts and every document associated in company with their solicitor or lawyer.
Orange is well known for changing contracts and T & C's left and centre (and memorably got clobbered by the regulator more than once).
Can you imagine the bill you would get if T-Mobile/Orange decided at the start of the month to change unlimited to 1gb/600/600? A £700 bill is one hell of a shock and dont expect the regulator to support you.
A bad bad bad idea, especially for a smartphone newbie.
After my experience with T-Mo this time last year, you may not be far from the truth. Last year T-Mo dropped their data caps right back down to something ridiculous like 512mb, and tried to tie their existing customers into it, too. Previously, all their Android tariffs - of which I had been a customer for some 4 months (and a T-Mo customer for well over 6 years) - had a flat data allowance of 3Gb per month. To get additional data allowance, you had to pay a hefty monthly fee.
Though if they had tried to apply it to existing customers, their own terms provided an escape clause. If there is a change to the contract that would be of "material detriment" to a customer, they have to give you 30 days notice of the change, and you are allowed to terminate the contract at no further cost - IIRC, this is an existing regulatory requirement. T-Mo tried to claim that the data allowance was an optional extra, not part of the core contract, and therefore not subject to these terms. However a data connection is essential for an Android phone and Android customers were not given the option to take a contract *without* the data - therefore it could not possibly constitute an "optional extra".
Eventually T-Mo relented and only applied the new cap to new customers.
Each call you make does cost the network something - less if it goes within their own network but much more if it goes cross network or to a land line. The same goes for each Mb of data - there is fixed cost to install the network but once you have used up all the existing capacity it costs to add more.
The other side is that unlimited plans attract very heavy users (who get great value) but as you get more and more heavy users they end up costing the mobile company more and more and the light(er) users end up paying more than they need or their network performance suffers.
lol it was only a few months back when t-mobile helpfully 'upgraded' me from my 3GB data package to their new unlimited data package and in just a brief moment my speed dropped from a consistant 2Mbps to a wonderful 512k.. I insisted they switched my package back despite them telling me there was no way there was a cap on the unlimited connection as it was 'truely unlimited'
Well would you believe it I was back up to 2Mbps as soon as they switched it back.
Will wait and see how well this one turns out!
See my earlier post (http://forums.reghardware.com/forum/containing/1299343). When T-Mo tried to kneecap my data last year, they told me that their new package was actually better. According to them, it was better because it was"unlimited". "Unlimited" in this case meant that when you hit the cap of 500mb, you can still use email and web browsing; whereas when you hit the cap with my existing package, you couldn't do anything at all.
No. Unlimited means no limit at all - no caps, no speed restrictions, no throttling, etc. Something which probably no network can provide 24/7.
Been with T-Mo for around 7 years now, but it feels like it's all gone to sh*te since Orange took over. The only reason I hesitate to leave them is because of the massive loyalty discounts they give me each month.
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Sorry but Orange did not takeover T-Mobile they have merged Networks. And truly unlimited does mean truly unlimited, previously the fair use policy on unlimited just restricted streaming and downloading not surfing or email and yes I'd agree that this is not truly unlimited. This new one removes the fair use policy as well, only thing I would check if signing up was the QoS setting they were giving to me as this can restrict speed.
"I'm looking for a new network right now..."
I'd look at Vodafone or Three - I travel the UK a lot and have a mifi on all the networks - Vodafone and Three (overall) seem significantly better - O2, T-Mobile/Orange are definitely 2nd class IMHO but YMMV as well.
If you spend your time in cities it less of an issue but even when all 'work' I find that Vodafone or Three are typically faster on average.
Avoid them both like the plague, unless you want to be stalked oneline and have your every move online sent half way around the world to a US company subject to the PATRIOT act, FISA warrants and other nastiness.
Oh, and also happens to be completely outside the control of any regulator here...
T-Mobile is very bad at telling customers about the caps, restrictions, and limits on their data connections. The best data is found in a forum post (link below).
For example, the standard “free internet” of a SIM-only contract is in fact speed-limited at about 0.9Mb/s if bought directly from T-Mobile, or 384kb/s if bought from a reseller. This used to be called “unlimited internet booster” but since it's limited not only in speed, but also there's a transfer cap, _and_ certain services are prohibited (e.g. VoIP), I guess that they decided that three different types of limitation meant that calling it unlimited was pushing it too far even for them.
Gory details here: http://support.t-mobile.co.uk/discussions/index?page=forums&topic=801019114689730134158c03af039a4
Free pint to anybody who finds any mention of these speed caps on T-Mobile's site. Look out for the sign that reads “beware of the tiger”, you'll probably be getting warm.