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T-Mobile Raises Deprioritization Threshold To 30GB (tmonews.com) 60

Posted by BeauHD from the better-than-the-rest dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TmoNews: T-Mobile's new deprioritization threshold is 30GB of usage in a single billing cycle. While T-Mo didn't make an official announcement about the change, you can see in this cached page that the network management policy says 28GB: "Based on network statistics for the most recent quarter, customers who use more than 28GB of data during a billing cycle will have their data usage prioritized below other customers' data usage for the remainder of the billing cycle in times and at locations where there are competing customer demands for network resources." Navigating to the webpage today now says 30GB. What this change means is that if you use more than 30GB of data in one billing cycle, your data usage will be prioritized below others for the remainder of that billing cycle. The only time that you're likely to see the effects of that, though, is when you're at a location on the network that is congested, during which time you may see slower speeds. Once you move to a different location or the congestion goes down, your speeds will likely go back up. And once the new billing cycle rolls around, your usage will be reset.
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T-Mobile Raises Deprioritization Threshold To 30GB More

T-Mobile Raises Deprioritization Threshold To 30GB

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  • Remember when... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    /. had news that matters? More science and less corporate plugs please.

    • Hey, got to make money somehow... But you are right, it makes it hard for the ad blocking software to catch them...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sabri ( 584428 )

        But you are right, it makes it hard for the ad blocking software to catch them...

        Well, what really annoys me is the amount of ##.col${RANDOM}.scw-horizontal.stackcommerce-widget entries I have in my adblock filters now.

    • Remember when Slashdot had news that mattered?

      Pepperidge Farm Remembers.

  • Most plans lower you to 2G speeds well below that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      Most plans lower you to 2G speeds well below that.

      T-Mobile lowers you to 4G speeds. I know reading is hard but FFS why comment if you don't have a fucking clue?

      • And you know this because you read the article... How about actually having an account? I had an account with MetroPCS, an alterego of T-Mobile, and I did run out of the amount they give you. I recently switched because their customer service is lousy. Now maybe T-Mobile branded accounts are different, but let me get back to you on that further on in the post
        And what is reduce you to 4G supposed to mean? There is no speed higher than 4G except for some companies playing with so-called 5G networks.
        Now back

        • T-Mo branded accounts are different then.
          I get throttled only near busy cells (based on observation such as: at the mall while lots of other people are there).
          Near my house I don't see any throttling at all.

          While I'm being throttled my phone is still reporting LTE, but I am seeing speeds drop to about 40-70% of normal.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by schnell ( 163007 )

            I get throttled only near busy cells (based on observation such as: at the mall while lots of other people are there).

            That's not throttling. That's T-Mobile's network getting slammed.

            Throttling is the deliberate, policy-based use of the network to constrain a user's throughput lower than default "best effort" settings. Traditionally this was done by forcing the user from a higher data rate technology to a lower one, such as bumping a user off the LTE network and onto 3G (HSPA/CDMA), or from a 3G network onto 2G (EDGE/1xRTT). More advanced networks can now do this by using LTE Quality of Service [netmanias.com] features to 1.) set a maxim

      • I may not have all the facts, but I certainly have a clue. Something you don't realize when your world comes to consist of what is contained in a single article.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by geek ( 5680 )

          I may not have all the facts, but I certainly have a clue. Something you don't realize when your world comes to consist of what is contained in a single article.

          I'm a TMO customer. Nice try troll.

          • That doesn't mean that you didn't narrow your worldview to the scope of the article, the only information you complained I didn't use in making my initial assessment. But what do you make of T-Mobile's own website saying that speeds are limited to 2G?

  • Why a threshold? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Pfhorrest ( 545131 )

    Why not just prioritize all traffic by previous traffic used per billing cycle? So light users generally get top prioritization and heavy users get gradually lower prioritization but nobody has to pick a number where it suddenly switches form one category to another.

    • GSM data is sent in 156-bit (18 byte) frames, which are then combined into superframes. So anyway the prioritization decision is made every few bytes - millions of times for one video. It needs to be fast, very fast, and a flag indicating "high" or "low" priority is fast - much much faster than computing and comparing a numerical score for each frame to see who is highest, then multiplying the reciprocal of that by time in queue.

      Also, long before T-Mobile started prioritizing based on usage so far in month

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by j-beda ( 85386 )

      Why not just prioritize all traffic by previous traffic used per billing cycle? So light users generally get top prioritization and heavy users get gradually lower prioritization but nobody has to pick a number where it suddenly switches form one category to another.

      I was thinking the same thing. When there is no congestion, everyone gets top speed, otherwise priotiize the lightest users. Heck - the light users probably won't make much of a dent in available bandwidth anyway.

      • That makes me think of another good reason to do this: since light users won't make much of a dent in available bandwidth, prioritizing them ensures that the largest number of users get full speed for all their usage. Like how if you have many things to do, you can get more of them done sooner by doing the quick ones first.

  • Just wish they had better coverage around me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DewDude ( 537374 )
      I'm not sure where "around me" is; but you may need to check to see if your phone lacks support for one of the bands they use. My area has seen a huge expansion of Band 12 LTE and the coverage has been pretty fantastic; but I also see areas with Band 2 expansion having a notice about having a compatible phone.

  • I totally misread the headline as a 30GB Deportation Threshold.

  • My Pay as you go $40/ month is still 2Gigs. Rising tide it ain't

  • First companies have a race to see who can screw their customers over the most. Now, they're in a race to see who can give customers the most data. So ... do they want to screw us over or not???

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