T-Mobile Ending All Overage Charges, Challenging Rivals to Follow

yg17 said:

It's funny, when AT&T does it with their grandfathered unlimited data plan, it's false advertising and misleading. When T-Mobile does it, it's revolutionary and shaking up the wireless industry.

Click to expand...

That's because AT&T was supposed to be truly unlimited. It wasn't. It's like saying if I open up an all you can eat buffet and then after two plates people can only use the salad bar that's the same as having a normal restaurant and saying people are allowed to go to the salad bar all they want. Yes, the end result is the same, but the way it was sold and presented to the consumer is different, and that's a HUGE difference.

edk99 said:

All I see is this is going to push low priced plans up. So t-mobiles $40 simple start plan will soon be $65+? Stoping overage charges wouldn't everyone flock to the cheapest plan? I can't see ATT and Verizon doing something like this.

Click to expand...

At this point, voice and texts are virtually unlimited across the board (newer plans). This isn't where these companies make their money, not where strain in the network is any longer. Data is the big thing, and TMO already throttles users after a certain point. Their packages are essentially various chunks of in throttled data all the way to unlimited.

I could see att competing by offering data rollover. For me, and I'm sure many others, that would be te better deal. We don't generally use our 10gb per month (maybe hit about half on average) but on months that we travel we tend to use more. Would be nice not to have to pay an overage one month when I haven't used my full allotments for eleven months prior. If also prefer something like this over being throttled. Throttled data may as well be no data at all for my purposes.

----------

SomeGuyDude said:

That's because AT&T was supposed to be truly unlimited. It wasn't. It's like saying if I open up an all you can eat buffet and then after two plates people can only use the salad bar that's the same as having a normal restaurant and saying people are allowed to go to the salad bar all they want. Yes, the end result is the same, but the way it was sold and presented to the consumer is different, and that's a HUGE difference.

Click to expand...

There are all you can eat buffets that have cut people off for eating ridiculous amounts of food. Just pointing this out since you used the analogy.

lordofthereef said:

At this point, voice and texts are virtually unlimited across the board (newer plans). This isn't where these companies make their money, not where strain in the network is any longer. Data is the big thing, and TMO already throttles users after a certain point. Their packages are essentially various chunks of in throttled data all the way to unlimited.

I could see att competing by offering data rollover. For me, and I'm sure many others, that would be te better deal. We don't generally use our 10gb per month (maybe hit about half on average) but on months that we travel we tend to use more. Would be nice not to have to pay an overage one month when I haven't used my full allotments for eleven months prior. If also prefer something like this over being throttled. Throttled data may as well be no data at all for my purposes.

----------



There are all you can eat buffets that have cut people off for eating ridiculous amounts of food. Just pointing this out since you used the analogy.

Click to expand...

What a yucky image that paints. People of Walmart image.

Mousse said:

Cable companies need to come up with a better excuse than that. We have the technology to run underground cables. Or are we still stuck with 19th century technology?

Click to expand...

While we do have the technology, it becomes expensive. The cables we lay today won't be in par with the throughput users demand in ten years, or twenty years. So you're either constantly ripping up the ground when upgrading (obviously not a viable option) or just leaving outdated systems in place.

I've lived in old historic buildings that, by virtue of being old and historic, haven't been renovated very far past the 1950's or 60's. Talk about a crap connection... Last thing we want is something similar EVERYWHERE.

That said, I'm not trying to be some cable company apologist. I'd love prices to be more reasonable, because "reasonable" shouldn't even be used in the same sentence as a cable bill.

----------

chinesedemo said:

Much of what you wrote here is nonsense. You are welcome to jump on the defeatism train. But you are the source of your own woes.

Click to expand...

Can you point to what parts were nonsense? I actually found all points to be rather spot on...

ArtOfWarfare said:

Do you think they'd really compete if Comcast weren't allowed to purchase them? I guess I could see that happening... if the market is saturated, then they don't have any other option but to vie for each other's customers. Or make illegal agreements that they'll each screw their customers in equal ways.

Click to expand...

Do I really think so? I dunno. Letting them merge though ensures that they won't. The government has gotten way too lax in maintaining the consumer's interest.

rohitp said:

How can T-Mobile do this? The bottom line is a very small part of their revenue comes from these overages so it's a minimal cost to them but puts pressure on the other carriers.

Click to expand...

I suppose that is the same with other carriers. They don't actually make _that_ much money from overages, and of course you get angry customers complaining, handling complaints takes time and money, and then they might leave you, which is more pain for the carrier...

For the customer, it's not just extra high payments, it's also the fact that you have to be careful what you do. If I have 1GB per month and used 950 MB I might not use Maps anymore out of fear it could be very expensive if I exceed the limit. Without overage payments, I can continue using it until it stops working because I reach the 1 GB limit.

QuarterSwede said:

If they throttled to the next lowest tier it would be fantastic as 3G is still fast enough to use the web and stream music while EDGE is pretty much only good for Mail and Messages.

Click to expand...

I've been throttled on T-Mobile (Thanks to a prepaid Android that gobbled up my 200MB that day) and it's decent. Mail, Messages, apps, navigation, light web browsing are all able to be done with it. IIRC it's EDGE speeds which are 128-256k and since it runs over the 3G/4G network latency is kept in check so it's not that bad.

It's crazy how many things Tmobile has done these past 2 years to entice customers to it's network, the only problem is the network still sucks. It's like the elephant in the room, cheap plans, no overages, etc but you can't make a phone call.

It's a good thing though because it makes AT&T and Verizon improve their offerings as well.

ArtOfWarfare said:

The cable industry needs a T-Mobile.

Click to expand...

Google Fiber is a nice start, but it (or something like it) needs to be available in more places.

Also, it should be darn near illegal for municipalities (cities,townships,etc...) to make deals with (cable) companies that basically give a monopoly.

Barring both of those, I think the next best thing would essentually for the masses to open up their wifi's (at least for internet, not for inhome/intranet) and essentually create a wireless mesh network built from the people so to speak.
Obviously this strategy needs more planning on almost every level but a worldwide mesh network where all nodes (excluding end nodes) on the network are routing traffic, balancing traffic, handeling requests, etc...
I'm not sure about other people, but I would be willing to pay a few thousand dollars for dedicated equiptment not to have to pay an ISP again. Of course this would mean most people would need to do the same, which means the equiptment would need to be simplified in administration, and come down in cost.
but you could get rid of the isp monopolies, balance control of the network in a more global distributed way.... and in the end we could call it SkyNet


And as another option

Oldschoolers said:

Hopefully it's called Apple

Click to expand...

I've long thought that Apple, Google, Microsoft, (and possibly others) could fund and run a joint venture that is just a (wireless) data only network. Run the voice and other services through the data. They may need to buy out another telecom (t-mobile/ATT/etc..) to help get the infrastructure started...

so many ideas in my head.

LOVE t-mobile!

Ive switched from Verizon this year, im paying 70 bucks (before tax) and i have unlimited everywhere. I mean literally EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD! (data, voice, text)

Steve Jobs once told the Verizon CEO, my vision is that carriers will offer $50 unlimited everything everywhere one day. The CEO laughed and said "thats impossible". And today t-mobile is in the exact direction of fulfilling that vision!

Kudos for being first!

arkmannj said:

......... Also, it should be darn near illegal for municipalities (cities,townships,etc...) to make deals with (cable) companies that basically give a monopoly.

Click to expand...

Yup, Beverly, Massachusetts has a deal with Comcast so if you want something else, you can get Verizon DSL or AOL Dialup. Otherwise it's Comcast overpriced cable. Of course the schools and library have comcast and surprise!!! Comcast can't handle the bandwidth that a high school with state of the art tech needs, so we now have to pay several thousand a month for fiber.

I would like to go from slow ass DSL to Verizon FIOS, but thanks to the greedy city officials, we are stuck with Comcast for 8 or so years.

ouimetnick said:

Yup, Beverly, Massachusetts has a deal with Comcast so if you want something else, you can get Verizon DSL or AOL Dialup. Otherwise it's Comcast overpriced cable. Of course the schools and library have comcast and surprise!!! Comcast can't handle the bandwidth that a high school with state of the art tech needs, so we now have to pay several thousand a month for fiber.

I would like to go from slow ass DSL to Verizon FIOS, but thanks to the greedy city officials, we are stuck with Comcast for 8 or so years.

Click to expand...

How is this legal?

Don't praise t-mo yet

I have had t-mobile pre-paid plan for the last couple of years, and I have really enjoyed the plan I have. However, t-mobile in collaboration with Google ended free hotspot capabilities on Google's Nexus line of smartphones! Upgrading to KitKat will disable the hotspot feature and renders it useless. There are options to bypass this, but it just tells you that t-mobile is not quite honest as it wants you to believe it is.

spock888 said:

I have had t-mobile pre-paid plan for the last couple of years, and I have really enjoyed the plan I have. However, t-mobile in collaboration with Google ended free hotspot capabilities on Google's Nexus line of smartphones! Upgrading to KitKat will disable the hotspot feature and renders it useless. There are options to bypass this, but it just tells you that t-mobile is not quite honest as it wants you to believe it is.

Click to expand...

For some reason T-mobile Hotspot has recently started working for me with the $30 pre-paid plan on my iPhone....previously it wanted me to pay $15 to turn it on. I've seen other reports of it being enabled for other users. You may want to check to see if it works again on your Nexus.

Sounds like US phone users were being ripped off. Good on T-Mobile on making a change. I know I wouldn't be too happy about extra charges on my contract.

jclardy said:

So how does this work then? I assume you are still going to pay for the extra data when you go over...but is it just at the same rate as your initial package?

Click to expand...

You should call the CEO up.

ghostface147 said:

Just expand your network and make it stronger....

Click to expand...

I'm not sure why everyone repeats this FUD. Everywhere I lived, be it rural Missouri or in a suburban setting elsewhere, they've had great coverage.

Currently my iPhone on T-Mobile is FASTER than comcast! I see 25 megabits in both direction on 3-4 bars of service. I've seen as high as 50 megabits in both directions, but that is with a stronger signal than I get in my concrete basement.

----------

spinedoc77 said:

It's crazy how many things Tmobile has done these past 2 years to entice customers to it's network, the only problem is the network still sucks. It's like the elephant in the room, cheap plans, no overages, etc but you can't make a phone call.

It's a good thing though because it makes AT&T and Verizon improve their offerings as well.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about your area, but coverage where I live has gotten much better. They've lit up STRONG LTE in our town. In addition, I see speeds that were only available on a wired connection only 1-2 years ago. Heck, in the right circumstances, tmobile is FASTER than my 50/10 comcast service. I've seen > 50 in both directions. There's no contract, so if it sucks for you, go back to your old provider and sign another contract. They're willing to pay you $650 for a try.

Really don't get some of the digs at T Mobile in the thread...

Anyone on any carrier in the US owes T Mobile an enormous debt of gratitude. Without T Mobile breaking the mould, would any of the other major carriers have improved their plans and offerings?

I travel a lot on business and in the last month have been in a number of countries in Europe and South America. I haven't paid a penny for data, and my many calls were 20c per minute.

On my prior Verizon plan, my bills could easily be between 350 to 500 per month for similar usage.

T-Mobile's move is a step in the right direction. Paying for usage is a stupid model because not all usage is equal - it's really usage at peak times that causes capacity problems.

If I'm using my phone or data at, say, 2am when practically no one is on the network, those minutes/bytes count against my plan just as much as when roughly 99% of the population (so it seems) are using their devices at the same time, taxing the overall system capacity.

It would make far more sense to pay for priority instead of usage. That is, all tiers of service would essentially be unlimited, except when the system resources suffer high contention. Under those conditions, the available resources are allocated to the users based on their relative priority - and the more you use during these times, the lower your priority gets (and you would recover back to your base priority in time).

Under such a system, instead of paying for extra minutes/data, you can subscribe to a higher tier to start with a higher base priority and/or see less priority attenuation due to usage. So the power users who need significant bandwidth during peak times can still pay for that privilege, while those on lower-level plans can still use their devices during heavy times, but also use them off-peak without worrying about hitting your limits.

In essence, its the whole "nights and weekends free" kind of plan, on steroids.

MacRumors said:

With this move, T-Mobile is abolishing those additional charges that are levied when a customer exceeds their available minutes or allotted data for their cellular plan.

Click to expand...

How can you "exceed your available minutes" and not get charged? I understand with data, your throttled so you have an incentive to get higher data packages if you use more data, but how can you do the same for minutes? Does your reception all the sudden get full of static or you start dropping calls when your minutes run out?

Great! Now how about fixing my reception issues? Just switched recently and drop calls like crazy. Much worse than AT&T in my area.

extrachrispy said:

The deal is that they throttle you to EDGE speeds when you reach your allocation, and then they call their plans "unlimited data."

Click to expand...

People like this is why I tend to think society needs to re-evaluate the education system. It is unlimited data. That they promised and are delivering. Unluckily for you, they never advertised nor promised the fastest speeds after you consumed your data allocation.

That is really well laid out and explained. The fact that you are complaining makes me think you are just a sheep repeating and repeating without actually doing your homework on the matter.

Unlimited data is unlimited data, period, whether its over Wi-Fi, LTE, 3G or EDGE, they are delivering that. Just not at the speed you want. Pony up more and you'll get that speed.

T-Mobile is Awesome

My daughter is in Argentina (Buenos Aires) for the summer. She is able to fully use her phone there. There are NO charges at all for data or text. NONE.

We are on the value plan, paying about $80 per month for 4 lines plus one iPad. She is able to get 3G data on hr iPhone 4S and I am able to talk to her via FaceTime and Viber. She was able to use this as soon as she landed w/o any changes to settings. Amazing! If she makes an actual call (and she hasn't) it is 20¢ per minute to call anywhere in the world!

There was some small issue for Claro Argentina dropping data/text at times so I had her manually lock it to MoviStar and everything works perfectly. (T-Mobile said that Claro had not fully implemented all the roaming provisions).

rohitp said:

My daughter is in Argentina (Buenos Aires) for the summer. She is able to fully use her phone there. There are NO charges at all for data or text. NONE.

We are on the value plan, paying about $80 per month for 4 lines plus one iPad. She is able to get 3G data on hr iPhone 4S and I am able to talk to her via FaceTime and Viber. She was able to use this as soon as she landed w/o any changes to settings. Amazing! If she makes an actual call (and she hasn't) it is 20¢ per minute to call anywhere in the world!

There was some small issue for Claro Argentina dropping data/text at times so I had her manually lock it to MoviStar and everything works perfectly. (T-Mobile said that Claro had not fully implemented all the roaming provisions).

Click to expand...

I do believe there was some limitation to how long or a percentage of days you can roam internationally for free. I remember thinking it wouldn't be a problem for a normal vacation or business trip, but if she is there for more than a month straight, you should probably make sure you know what the limit is and what the implications of exceeding it are. If she will pass it, it might make sense for her to get a local prepaid data only SIM there.

I thought it was something like no more than 60 days of roaming each 90 days, but now it says this: As long as the majority of your usage is on T-Mobile’s U.S. network, you will experience unlimited data and text. Service may be terminated for excessive roaming, misuse, or abnormal use.

So if she's not using it at all in the US, you may have some problems.

BruiserB said:

I do believe there was some limitation to how long or a percentage of days you can roam internationally for free. I remember thinking it wouldn't be a problem for a normal vacation or business trip, but if she is there for more than a month straight, you should probably make sure you know what the limit is and what the implications of exceeding it are. If she will pass it, it might make sense for her to get a local prepaid data only SIM there.

I thought it was something like no more than 60 days of roaming each 90 days, but now it says this: As long as the majority of your usage is on T-Mobile’s U.S. network, you will experience unlimited data and text. Service may be terminated for excessive roaming, misuse, or abnormal use.

So if she's not using it at all in the US, you may have some problems.

Click to expand...

Thanks for bringing this up. She's just there for the summer. TMo confirmed that there's no set time limit.