Last month, T-Mobile promised it would soon do something about its extreme heavy-data users, those users who suck up 2,000 GB per month or more of data.
Now, T-Mobile is ready to put a ban in place, stopping or slowing users that tether their smartphones to their other devices, using up heavy amounts of data in the process. T-Mobile stressed in a blog post last month that these users were not only taking advantage of the company's unlimited data plan, but also causing congestion that affects their other customers.
"I am taking aim at a select group of individuals who have actually been stealing data from T-Mobile," T-Mobile CEO John Legere wrote in a blog post last month. "If their activities are left unchecked their actions could eventually have a negative effect on the experience of honest T-Mobile customers."
The problem for the company comes from those users who abuse the system: those who use tethering apps to use their smartphone data plan to get Internet access for their other devices. While doing so, these users "abuse" the unlimited data plan that T-Mobile offers by downloading movies, streaming content and using as much as 2,000 GB of data per month.
T-Mobile offers limited tethering with its plans (with the option to increase the limit for an added charge), but these tethering apps allow customers to bypass that limit and continue to use data for tethering beyond set limits.
Legere calls these users "clever hackers who are willfully stealing for their own selfish gain." It's a small group of users, but the company plans on doing something about it: T-Mobile will send those users a warning about their behavior. If those users continue tethering, they will have their service plan changed to T-Mobile's $50 per month plan that only includes 1 GB of data.
Of course, this also affects users who only have T-Mobile as an option for high-speed Internet access. The Wall Street Journal spoke with one such user, Hunter Stephenson, who lives in rural Alabama in an area that has no other high-speed Internet options. Stephenson insists it's not a "nefarious hacker thing," but a case of "people who use as much as I do every month – they don't have any other options."
For T-Mobile, this new move could become a slippery slope, especially since the company promotes its unlimited plan as being truly unlimited.
Photo: William Warby | Flickr
