T-Mobile Joins the Capped Data Bandwagon 112
NicknamesAreStupid writes "It looks like T-Mobile is following the lead of Verizon and AT&T in shifting from unlimited data plans to tiered pricing. It starts with their family plans which may be cheaper than unlimited depending on your family's usage. Was this done for its customers' families or for its future parent, AT&T?"
It is really too bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am willing to bet a lot of people would prefer to replace their Cable, DSL, Fiber with a Cell connection, if it were affordable enough. 3G is fast enough for most browsing.
Cell phones got popular when they removed the extra fees like roaming costs and free long distance calling. Now it seems like they forgot about this with overly expensive data plans with caps. Even if it is cheaper people don't like caps,
Price fixing is illegal isnt it? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a con job. These are the same companies that want to charge you a fortune for limited texting.
Does not seem legal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I am not a lawyer, there would seem to be an issue concerning the sale of "unlimited" plans, if there is a data cap on them. I know when I signed up with T-Mobile I went for the unlimited option and was assured that unlimited meant just that, unlimited. There was no mention of a data cap. By quietly imposing a data cap on so-called 'unlimited' plans, it would appear that T-Mobile are playing rather fast and lose with Federal law. In particular, The Uniform Commercial Code, Section 2-313 [cornell.edu] (2) states that,
"(a) Any affirmation of fact or promise made by the seller which relates to the goods and becomes part of the basis of the bargain creates an express warranty that the goods shall conform to the affirmation or promise.
(b) Any description of the goods which is made part of the basis of the bargain creates an express warranty that the goods shall conform to the description."
So, why are T-Mobile not in violation of these provisions?Are there any legal types who can explain how this can be legitimate?
they enforced the cap with a bandwidth throttle (Score:4, Interesting)
They always had a 5GB Cap
It's a weird sort of cap. Once you hit it, they throttle your connection to stupidly slow speeds.
Which is funny, since on my "4G" phone in Boston, most of the time I'm lucky to get 10-20KB/sec because all the backhauls are grossly underspec'd.
In Davis Square in Somerville, I'll get several megabits a second. In Roslindale (Boston)? I'm lucky to break 100kbit, yet my phone proudly displays a "4G" icon and full signal strength.