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Communications The Internet

T-Mobile Says It May Slow Home Internet Speeds of Some Users in Times of 'Congestion' (cnet.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
T-Mobile has tweaked its terms of service for its home broadband users to add a new clause: If you are a heavy internet user that passes 1.2TB of data in a monthly billing cycle, you may have your speeds slowed in "times of congestion" or when there is a lot of pressure on the network. CNET: As spotted by The Mobile Report, the change went into effect on Jan. 18. In its updated terms, the carrier says that these users "will be prioritized last on the network" in congestion situations, which could mean painfully slow speeds for however long the congestion persists. T-Mobile does note that since its Home Internet service is available only in "limited areas" and intended to be used in a "stationary" setting, as opposed to a phone that could be in a busy place like a packed stadium, "these customers should be less likely to notice congestion in general."
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T-Mobile Says It May Slow Home Internet Speeds of Some Users in Times of 'Congestion' More

T-Mobile Says It May Slow Home Internet Speeds of Some Users in Times of 'Congestion'

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  • ...the telecom monopolies will sue or otherwise use dirty tricks against anyone who tries to provide competition

  • So? (Score:3)

    by Bert64 ( 520050 ) <bertNO@SPAMslashdot.firenzee.com> on Monday January 29, 2024 @01:54PM (#64198162) Homepage

    Any wireless spectrum is a finite resource. The more you use of it, the less is available for everyone else within range. If you want dedicated wireless spectrum it's going to cost you a _LOT_ more than a dedicated fibre run.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      You don't need dedicated spectrum you need dedicated time slices on the spectrum in a given geo-graphic region, to give you certainties around latency and thruput.

      Kind exactly like you do for GPON or ATM running over fiber; unless you do a home run for every endpoint (nobody does this).

      The situation is really very much the same, other than with fiber we have some control over the amount of media, but you could argue the same about wireless spectrum; if a carrier wants more they can buy/license it.

    • Any wireless spectrum is a finite resource.

      Same is true for wired connections ...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Ok buring fiber is farvfrom cheap, but at keast it is possible when you have exceded the capacety, all all rf spectrum in an area is used ( in the relevant bands, therevis no mor to be had, that is a rather big difference, yea you can make smaller cells to a point but then it stops for rf.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Any wireless spectrum is a finite resource. The more you use of it, the less is available for everyone else within range. If you want dedicated wireless spectrum it's going to cost you a _LOT_ more than a dedicated fibre run.

      This... in spades with modern networks utilising MIMO (Multiple Input/Multiple Output) to provide high speed connections. If the given frequency band is carved up into 5MHz chunks, devices can use multiple chunks simultaneously to upload and download faster. Of course as there's only so many chunks available as the frequency bands are usually 50-100 MHz wide, so likely T-Mo is limiting MIMO on fixed wireless (I.E. home users).

      Many, many moons ago, I had a fixed wireless connection, during the evening (6-

      • I'm already seeing this. The slowdown on the weekends, when everyone is home in this mostly rural area. It ranges from the average of 200mbps to having dropped to around 40mb. It's still quite usable, for me, so far, on tmobile.

  • No need for fiber (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zekica ( 1953180 ) on Monday January 29, 2024 @01:58PM (#64198176)
    All that marketing fluff about 5G being as good as fiber. It is physically not possible to even compare any technology using air to those using fiber.

    • All that marketing fluff about 5G being as good as fiber.

      Is the congestion from the tower to the home, or on the backbone?

  • 40GB pe day, every day. Still, it's a wired connection. Maybe they need to build out their infrastructure.

    • Re:That's a lot of data (Score:5, Informative)

      by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Monday January 29, 2024 @02:04PM (#64198190)

      Still, it's a wired connection.

      T-Mobile is a wireless provider - it's a 5G cell service.

      • Still, it's a wired connection.

        T-Mobile is a wireless provider - it's a 5G cell service.

        Trying to provide "broadband internet" on a cell network is beyond retarded.

        • It depends, it's not the 2010's anymore. It's anecdotal but in my immediate neighborhood I there is always a weekly question about how bad Spectrum is for broadband (they are the only reasonable option outside 10mb/s old ass POTS DSL) and a lot of people have dumped them for this TMobile or ATT 5G at-home plans and they are very happy with it because it is cheaper and they report less outage issues.

          Now for someone like myself who does a lot of work from home, downloads plenty of movies and games, nah I am

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AvitarX ( 172628 )

            Their service is dramatically better than what Comcast offers if I care about upstream.

            With T-Mobile I get 20-75 down 20-50 up.

            If I want 20 up with Comcast it's 500/20 for 3x the price.

            • Yeah when I was in Europe recently the hotel I was staying at only had 5G hotspots for their internet access and running a quick couple speed test the upstream rate was wild, I think I had almost 90mbps which for normal home ISP is a crazy number.

              I was also surprised at how reasonable the latency was, in an online FPS it was pretty consistent around 70-90ms (albeit it had some occasional large spikes)

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AvitarX ( 172628 )

                Yep, as long as they don't oversell it I'm happy.

                I will say that during the last week of December and a recent snow day it may have been over saturated.

                Just a loose feeling, and maybe it was the corporate VPN due to more people being at home.

                But when I shared over teams it was taking much longer than normal for my screen to come up.

          • Now for someone like myself who does a lot of work from home, downloads plenty of movies and games, nah I am not accepting 5G as my home connection but for your average Facebook browsing granny? Probably just fine.

            I've tried T-Mobile's 5G home internet service because I was also getting fed up with Spectrum. It had some caveats which turned out to be major dealbreakers:

            You have to use their WiFi router/modem combo unit, because you're behind carrier-grade NAT. The modem/router you're required to use sucks (more on that later).
            The carrier-grade NAT makes any application or game which depends on you having a real IPv4 IP address not work.
            The latency is bad to the point you can't really play any "fast twitch"-type onl

            • I'd honestly say the target market for this thing is people who are totally satisfied with using their phone's hotspot as their broadband connection.

              Yes, that's why I used the concept of "Facebook browsing grannys"

              If you know enough about tech to know the pros and cons of both options then de-facto you are probably not the market for 5G at home service.

              • Well, to be fair, anyone who is fed up with the cable company is the target market for T-Mobile's service. The problem is that the service itself just doesn't deliver the goods.

        • Still, it's a wired connection.

          T-Mobile is a wireless provider - it's a 5G cell service.

          Trying to provide "broadband internet" on a cell network is beyond retarded.

          Depends on your use and requirements. I went from ATT high speed fiber to TMob 5G and the biggest difference I have noticed is my TMob bill is less than 1/3 of my ATT bill. Download speeds are fast enough for two video streams, and certainly good enough for email/browsing/etc. Yes, d/ls take about 2x(based on my actual, not the advertised, speeds) but I'm willing to trade money for speed since I don't really d/l large files. Uploads are very slow, but I rarely upload large files. If I had to do a lot o

      • Still, it's a wired connection.

        T-Mobile is a wireless provider - it's a 5G cell service.

        Wireless connects to wired at some point -- both have finite capacity. Just sayin' ...

    • 40 GB per day sounds like a lot, but imagine you buy a new game console and want to redownload the games you play (games aren't physical anymore). Series X and PS5 have 1 TB drives. That's practically your limit right there. Not a weird edge case at all, something tons of normal people will hit every once in a while.

      ~1 TB is fine for me for a normal month, but I've had a few times in the last few years where I bumped up against it. I strongly prefer T-Mobile's model (we may slow you down) to Xfinity/Com

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Normal people will hit it; but that is because the frankly irresponsible assumption that bandwidth is significant and transfer is unmetered by so damn many modern software vendors.

        The fact that its just assumed everyone can download 20-80Gigabytes x however many games they have AND just re-download them even IF they may already have a local copy with no option to do it any other way ought to be criminal! I spend years with fixed-LTE being the only thing I could get faster than dial-up and crap like Microsof

        • Don't forget all those video ads. Just browsing websites can run a multi-gig quota dry quite quickly without some form of ad-blocking.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            That is a true to - Advertisers have abandon any regard for client resource usage.

            I never much bothered with ad-blocking when it was just banners and even the occasional pop-up. However when the images started getting much larger (as in file-sized) and the auto-play videos became a thing.

            Well suddenly I started doing SSL-BUMP + DNS RPZ... and that was why. While I was on Verizons home broadband solution the cost really worked out to about $4 a gig. Those horrible pop over videos and forced youtube ads star

      • Re:That's a lot of data (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Monday January 29, 2024 @03:37PM (#64198470) Homepage Journal

        40 GB per day sounds like a lot

        No, it doesn't. Netflix UHD content is 7 GB per hour, and that's before doing anything else. So if you're the sort of person who leaves Netflix playing in the background while you work or whatever, it's really easy to go way over 40 GB per day, even as a single individual living alone, much less a family with three kids watching their own shows, doing video chats with their friends, etc. Add to that things like software updates for your computers, phones, etc., and mere double-digit gigabytes per day really isn't much.

        The problem here is that T-Mobile has unrealistic expectations. They are trying to be a home Internet provider, but they're trying to provide the amount of data that would be typical for someone using a single cellular phone. Cellular networks don't scale well to the amount of traffic that is typical for home Internet use, and most home Internet use doesn't respond well to throttling, so this won't end well.

        In effect, what they're really saying is that they know Starlink is going to take pretty much all of their home business away anyway, and they don't care enough to try to compete. Remember this the next time there's an antitrust question about cellular providers. They're not trying to compete.

      • I didn't RTFA, but I'm pretty sure that T-Mobile will let you download your game during a time when not almost everybody is using their phone, at a speed you wouldn't have imagined 10 years ago. If you are a gamer, you will be awake at that time anyway.

      • Buy and install a single game and you'll download more than 40GB. Didn't BG3 break 100GB on its install?

        • Buy and install a single game and you'll download more than 40GB. Didn't BG3 break 100GB on its install?

          40 GB is too low an estimate. Newer games are hugely bloated. RDR2 with all DLC is over 100GB too. AC:Origins was originally 45 GB, but now an "update" puts it on 70 GB territory. AC: Valhalla, Borderlands 3, Death Stranding, Far Cry 6 (170 GB), Watch Dogs: Legion, The Last of Us (part I)... all of them are extremely bloated. Downlad a few of them and you're toast under T-Mobile's plan.

  • I thought the home internet plan was already the lowest priority

    • Re:Actual change? (Score:4, Informative)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Monday January 29, 2024 @02:25PM (#64198242)

      I thought the home internet plan was already the lowest priority

      They are. The change is that new accounts (there is conflicting info on if this will be applied to existing accounts) are being moved UP one priority level, then will fall back to the lowest level if they go over 1.2TB.

  • We've started threatening to fire people at my company that work from home more than 2 days a week and fell for this "home wireless internet" 5G scam bullshit. Our VOIP system can't tolerate a leaf blowing past or slight fog or light rain on your fake 5G trash, everyone.

    • Sounds more like a problem with the brittle VOIP system you've chosen.

      • If you are work from home get a damned wire. It's your fucking job on the line.

        If you can't do that for whatever reason, then get back into the office...

        • Too little information. A VOIP system should operate fine over wireless connections just fine, it's almost like cell phones by their vary nature carry voice calls with no problems.

          If your connection is so bad that you can't do your work? Yeah, that's your problem, get into the office or fix it.

          If I have a 5G connection with 60ms latency and 80/20mb/s bandwidth (what my TMobile phone just speedtested) and the VOIP keeps breaking is that my problem now?

          • If a wired connection does not have the same problem, then yes it is your problem.

            Generally comparing a wired connection with a wireless connection is never a fair comparison. One is reliably stable and the other, well, is not.

            • So my ability to conduct work from home hinges on the competency of my IT department to implement a VOIP system that works in the 2020's and not the aughts? This isn't 3G or EDGE wireless we talking about here. What about my wireless connection specification could we point to that would impede a VOIP system from working? I have taken dozens of full on video calls on my phone but the VOIP is going to break because of what?

              Hey you know what, you're the employer but if I am told "all else equal you can't work

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
                yes, just the same as your job depends on not clicking on phishing email links and entering your work credentials at office.microsoftonline.ru even through they should never be getting through the corporate firewall.

              • What about my wireless connection specification could we point to that would impede a VOIP system from working?

                Cellular Internet tends to have higher latency (ping time) than wired Internet. Higher latency in voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) leads to people talking over each other more often.

                • That *can* be true but I don't think it's as a total consistent truth as it was say 5,10,15 years ago.

                  Like I have a 90ms east to west coast on my cable home connection, my 4G on 2 bars of reception I get 110ms

                  If 20ms breaks VOIP I would consider that a VOIP problem.

          • Too little information. A VOIP system should operate fine over wireless connections just fine, it's almost like cell phones by their vary nature carry voice calls with no problems.

            When you make a voice call (which these days is VoLTE) on a cell network, your connection is given much higher priority to reduce latency. T-Mobile's home internet solution does no such thing when you're utilizing it for VOIP and you certainly can experience some odd behavior.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      I get far better work from home performance from T-Mobile than Comcast.

      The faster upstream more than makes up for the reasonable but slower downstream and the 10 extra Ms of ping

  • I have T-Mobile Home Internet (Score:3)

    by ardmhacha ( 192482 ) on Monday January 29, 2024 @02:43PM (#64198288)

    I have had it over 2 years, usage up to 1.1 GB / month usually below 1GB. Speedwise it it fine, latency is not great but my kids don't play many online games do it is not a major issue. Bulk of the usage comes from streaming.

    TMHI has always had the lowest priority QCI 9, so this probably won't have much practical effect. Some new customers have the second lowest priority QCI 8 and will drop to QCI 9 after 1.2 GB

  • Like the FHWA is slowing the highway traffic during times of 'congestion'?

  • Look it up. But some people think their download speed matters more than the VoIP or streaming quality of everybody else. Go buy real Internet access for real money instead of fucking making T-Mobile the obvious hell hole it is.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Are you claiming that on T-Mobile there are times where you can't make calls because all the lines are taken? Yet you still want to be able to download shit at the same time at the highest theoretical speed, and complain when you can't? Ohh well, some people (e.g. you) are just weird.

  • I don't give a damn how congested the network might be or how that relates to my data transfers to and from work.

    Users paying for transfer speeds and rely on those speeds to work. So why is TMO going down that old bullshit "cable internet congestion" excuse rather than building out sufficient bandwidth?

    TMO is treating users as though the Internet is a luxury that we should be thank for for the smallest bit of access rather than providing what users are paying them for.

    Buy a clue TMO. Build out your damned n

    • Cellular likely can't support the same level of bandwidth that a fiber or DOCSIS 3.0 connection but they (and Verizon and ATT) are in the market for home internet because they can make headways and they are not doing it because their connection is so much better but (in my opinion) off the customer dissatisfaction people have with their local internet monopoly.

      Everyone in my area I know who who have switched to a 5G connection for home did because Spectrum either is giving them frequent outages and the pric

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      And just how is T-Mobile supposed to fit more bandwidth into the same radio spectrum?

  • I bet they still advertise it as unlimited.

  • payment of T-Mobile bill may correspondingly diminish in times of poor service.

  • Charge me whatever you think is fair. I mean we agreed to a certain speed when we signed a contract but I understand that the speed isn't guaranteed and I am grateful for any scraps you offer me in exchange for $130/mo.

  • That they aren't already doing it...
  • If it is sold as "unlimited" so shall it be. If there was a restaurant the sold "all you can eat," and the owner didn't allow people to do it, they would have legal problems. So would this be different?

  • I just changed my AT&T plan. They post a similar notice all over the documentation.

    Given a choice between a data cap with overage fees (that was the stone age policy), a data cap with guaranteed throttling (that was my old policy), and unlimited data with potential throttling if needed (current policy), I'll take the last one. Since I also upgraded to 5G at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if the throttled service is still faster than my previous LTE service.

  • ... you build your monopoly. First, you go crying to the government, asking for more spectrum allocation [slashdot.org] with which you will serve your customers. Never mind that you can't give it away yourself and have to resell it through MVNOs at bargain basement rates. Of course the organizations giving up that spectrum will complain. But you'll just resell it back to them as a part of your 5G network, further building the monopoly.

    When regulators realize what you are up to [slashdot.org], you play your second card. Which is to thr

  • I wish t-mobile, etc, would realize that if they fixed their bufferbloat, the complaints about speed would vanish, and they could still throttle big users to their hearts content. fq_codeled 5G in my lifetime would be nice to see.

  • START kimiting speeds? (Score:3)

    by Wizardess ( 888790 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @04:36AM (#64199930)

    What's this start BS? Ever since I got my T-Mobile mini-trashcan we've seen several times per day slow downs and even dropped connections. Most of them are either at drive time or during major holidays or sports events. They basically cannot avoid it. The spectrum is a finite resource at any distance scale you configure with antenna height. And T-Mobile does not have enough antenna sites providing data access that they can avoid slowdowns.

    1) It's better than Nothing.
    2) It's better than DSL, most of the time.
    3) It's way way better than POTS dialup.
    4) Those are the alternatives I have as Spectrum refuses to run their cables in to our property. And Frontier has not run in fiber, although they told us they had. Therein lies another tale of woe. marketing idiots, bad record keeping, and bull headed stupidity.

    {^_^}

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