T-Mobile To Throttle Customers Who Use Unlimited LTE Data For Torrents/P2P 147
New submitter User0x45 writes: Here's a nicely transparent announcement: "T-mobile has identified customers who are heavy data users and are engaged in peer-to-peer file sharing, and tethering outside of T-Mobile’s Terms and Conditions (T&C). This results in a negative data network experience for T-Mobile customers. Beginning August 17, T-Mobile will begin to address customers who are conducting activities outside of T-Mobile’s T&Cs." Obviously, it's not a good announcement for people with unlimited plans, but at least it's clear. T-mobile also pulled the backwards anti-net neutrality thing by happily announcing 'Free Streaming' from select music providers... which is, in effect, making non-select usage fee-based.
Re:This is going to end so well for them! (Score:5, Informative)
There is no unlimited tethering, and they aren't throttling capped data.
They are throttling phone based P2P, and (as I read it) separately, unauthorized tethering.
WoW distribution, needing to be tethered, would be capped data and not throttled.
It's people like me that have downloaded movies on the go to watch that would be throttled.
Re:This is going to end so well for them! (Score:3, Informative)
At least they are being honest and upfront about the services they provide and that gives the customer the freedom to choose appropriately.
Re:Ummm... (Score:2, Informative)
What excuse? The excuse that they've identified it specifically as a huge bandwidth hog on their networks and, given the practical realities of sharing bandwidth among multiple users, disallowed p2p services in the terms and conditions that those users agreed to when they signed up. Nobody said anything about pedophiles.
Re:This is going to end so well for them! (Score:5, Informative)
Irrelevant - if T-Mobile's T&C says you cannot use the service for bittorrent or other P2P protocols, and the T&C was available at the time the customers signed up, T-Mobile is fully within its remit to throttle these.
Re:Ummm... (Score:1, Informative)
You can saturate a gigabit connection from a single person seeding Bittorent P2P traffic. The amount of connections it creates is insane too. It's like standing on the rooftop of your home and throwing money on the ground in the ghetto. You don't have enough lawn space for all the hoards of people waiting to fight over it. P2P bandwidth is high because people are fighting for resources to access "free" shit.
ISOs, FOSS.... yeah what the fuck ever man. It's Movies, Music, Porn, and Games. STFU and get real. P2P is 99% illegitimate traffic and highly illegal.
Re:This is going to end so well for them! (Score:4, Informative)
It's only for TETHERING beyond the allowed limit on unlimited data connections. Let me say that again, TETHERING only and only when you've used up you're tethering allowance for the month. Hell, they basically said you can tether as much as you want for everything else, which is pretty freaking cool.
If you've got tons of bittorrents running over your TETHERED t-mobile connection beyond 2.5 GB/month, you're a douche. You brought this on yourself and no cell phone company should have to put up with it.
Re:Two different issues, network-wise, IMO .... (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone keeping torrent downloads going on a regular basis over LTE really is just mis-using the service.
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Then come back here and and explain to me why it's silly for users to think they can use their connection for whatever they want to.
T-Mobile spent millions advertising lies and fraudulent claims just to sell service, and is now trying to cut off the users that actually used the service in the way they advertised it. If I were selling a moving service, and I put out ads showing us moving an elephant, how on earth could I complain when a customer actually asked us to move an elephant? That's what was advertised, that's what they should deliver. End of story.
Re:This is going to end so well for them! (Score:4, Informative)
There is no unlimited tethering, and they aren't throttling capped data.
Yes and no. I originally went with T-Mobile because their tethering plan seemed like a bargain compared to the other telcos; Verizon, Sprint and AT&T, but they must've dropped it at some point because it's apparently something they don't offer anymore because when I went to upgrade my phone a few months ago they asked me if I wanted to keep it. They told me that if I did dropped it I wouldn't be able to get it back because my account was grandfathered in and that they don't offer it anymore otherwise. Mind you they still have tethering but not unlimited tethering it seems.
Re:This is going to end so well for them! (Score:4, Informative)
Last I checked they have not repealed the laws of physics nor has anyone disproved the Shannon Harley limit recently. T-mobile has only a finite amount of radio frequency spectrum available to them. If you don't believe me, then get 10 gigabit networking running on 20 Mhz of spectrum on 2.4 Ghz wifi. There might be a Nobel Prize for you if you do.