T-Mobile CEO to users hiding their hotspot tethering activities: “It's over.” | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile CEO to users hiding their hotspot tethering activities: “It's over.”

zdnet.com

18 pointsatomical92 comments

I always find it amusing when these issues come up and people need to remind us all that "UNLIMITED SHOULD MEAN UNLIMITED!" ... I've always assumed it was common sense that "unlimited" is essentially a marketing buzzword.

No network is capable of offering "unlimited" service to all customers. It means they aren't going to enforce draconian caps on every day usage. It's to give the typical user the reassurance that they have nothing to worry about in terms of overage. It's not to provide people with 2TB a month of transfer.

Frankly, I find using 2TB a month on an "unlimited" plan to be abusive and disrespectful to other customers. These networks obviously have real limits and capacities. Clearly abusing an "unlimited" plan does little but encourage service providers to enforce data caps and overage fees.

T-mobile does actually honor their unlimited plans (unlike AT&T and Verizon). This article is about people explicitly breaking the TOS on a non-unlimited part of the plan.

I switched to T-mobile recently and it's been a breath of fresh air - I think people are used to being skeptical of mobile providers after years of abuse. The first intuition of commenters in this thread was to find something to criticize, despite that fact that T-mobile never promised anything it isn't delivering.

Unlike Verizon? Could you elaborate on that point, please?

Verizon throttled their unlimited 3g plans for years (apparently they just stopped this month: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/13...). They planned to do this to 4g unlimited customers too, but backed off after a stern warning from the FCC. I have friends who are grandfathered in their unlimited plans and as I understand it they do everything they can to get you off of it.

These networks obviously have real limits and capacities.

There are only real limits in terms of bandwidth, and not the quantity of data transferred.

You are 100% right. Unfortunately, due to the way wireless spectrum works you have no choice but to oversubscribe available bandwidth in the hopes that not every user is using their devices at once. While they suck for a consumer, limits on total data transferred allow wireless providers to allow users the ability to use their devices but limit the amount of time they are consuming available bandwidth.

And someone using 2TB a month is going to be using a lot more of that bandwidth over time than someone using 5GB.

Unless you have a magical infinite SNR, limited bandwidth ensures limited data transfer.

These towers have a monthly data transfer maximum.

I agree completely. So many on XDA forums brag about downloading terabytes a month. I'm not sure why T-Mobile doesn't just cut them off and let those who accidentally go over a tiny amount to browse un-throttled. I recently downgraded my "unlimited" plan to 2gb since I got a Verizon hotspot, and whenever I go anywhere close to 2GB the phone almost immediately stops working on data. So much worse than AT&T ever was to me.

How about T-Mobile make data plans more realistic and stop throttling to absurd lengths. I like the focus on the cheaters, but for those playing by the rules it's absolutely shit.

"unlimited plan" means "you pay for a bandwidth instead of an amount of data downloaded". And if you're able to download 2TB in a period of time, you have the right to do so.

Yes, I know, common carriers are overselling bandwidth like hell, but it's not a good excuse for blaming customers for using the service they paid for.

One idea I've always liked for solving the "unlimited" problem and complaints about overage charges is to provide fixed data transfer but do exponential throttling: the first X GB are unthrottled, the next X GB throttled to half the advertised bandwidth, then quarter, 1/8, 1/16, ... so customers can never go over the limit despite how hard they try, but they can still try to use as much as they want.

Another alternative would be constant, but very low-bandwidth, "unlimited" plans.

Unlimited is an actual word with a fairly clear definition (unlike, say, 'natural'), and reasonable people assume that when someone says 'unlimited', what they mean is 'unlimited by anything other than natural constraints' -- such as, is the case with an 'unlimited buffet', the amount you can eat in one sitting.

This is not dissimilar to internet service; you're limited by the available bandwidth to a certain amount of transit you can consume in a period of time.

If businesses don't actually mean 'unlimited', then they can say what they do mean. 2TB? 4TB? 10TB?

I've always taken it to mean "unlimited within reason". 2TB of transfer in a month over an LTE connection is obvious abuse from my perspective.

I've always assumed it was common sense that "unlimited" is essentially a marketing buzzword.

Yeah, they're lying. And users are simply calling their bluff.

Frankly, I find using 2TB a month on an "unlimited" plan to be abusive and disrespectful to other customers.

I find "abuse" and "disrespect" to be an incredibly dishonest characterization of the situation.

Firstly, what do you base that number on? The cellular technology's capacity, historical network usage data and their wired backhaul capacity analyzed in the context of the cost of ongoing network capacity expansions? Or just the fact the T-Mobile CEO says it's over a line that the company would prefers to lie about the existence of? And, well, "2T" still feels big-ish in 2015 and vague impressions that cellular spectrum is crowded from the carefully crafted public messaging of cellular providers that want to influence RF licensing and policy?

How does or should any one user know when their data usage starts to be inhospitable to their fellow customers? Personal example: our aging internet connection at work would suffer when too many people were streaming music. As of two months ago we have a much nicer link, streaming is cool again and the change was entirely behind the scenes. Without clear and open communication I have no way to know what data rates at at what time of the day are OK for the office.

Secondly, the ideas of abuse and disrespect are wedging social pressures into a business transaction. I suddenly have to meter my usage, with little guidance, because using what I thought I bought from T-Mobile will prevent T-Mobile's other customers from access to what they bought? Even if I don't break the TOS to tether, my actual verizon plan is capped is 5 GB and I think that's still the highest-data single phone plan available there. Does that mean 5, 10 or 20 GB would be past the unfriendly barrier on a T-Mobile unlimited terms?

Large faceless corporation T-Mobile doesn't follow all the social norms you would expect from a person when they're seeking profit, why should the suddenly get to use social pressures to limit costs? Because they have the technical ability to make other customers collateral damage?

That was quite the performance!

> Firstly, what do you base that number on? The cellular technology's capacity, historical network usage data and their wired backhaul capacity analyzed in the context of the cost of ongoing network capacity expansions?

Yes.

If you think cellular networks are built to handle anywhere close to 2TB a month per user you are extremely uninformed.

> How does or should any one user know when their data usage starts to be inhospitable to their fellow customers?

I think you're the one being dishonest here. At 2TB+ a month of data usage that you've acquired after altering your phone's functionality to intentionally get around T-Mobile's restrictions, that is so obviously crossing a line that one should not have to "wonder" if they are using the service as it was intended. I'd actually have to wonder how a single customer reaches 2TB in transfers. My household downloads its fair share of ISO's, Netflix series', software updates, games, backups etc. and doesn't come anywhere close to 2TB on our fibre connection.

> I suddenly have to meter my usage, with little guidance, because using what I thought I bought from T-Mobile will prevent T-Mobile's other customers from access to what they bought?

You thought you were buying the right to circumvent their usage restrictions? What?

You don't have to do anything. You are not a lone user on a network just as you are not a lone citizen on this planet. We share resources. You can behave however you choose to. If you want to max out your connection and skirt a service provider's policy to maximize what you feel you're entitled to in your business arrangement with them, be my guest. Just don't think I have accept your rationale for doing so.

Can we agree that if a company advertises a service as unlimited, and in fact it IS limited and you CAN hit that limit easily under what should be considered normal use then it is false advertising?

I agree that it's strictly impossible to allow for 'unlimited' bandwidth, but I'd argue that the clear meaning of the word in this context leads you to assume that it's unmetered and you can reasonably assume that you can make use of the service at a consumer level without worrying about hitting a cap.

I'm not arguing that you should be able to download 2TB's of data a month on a cell phone hotspot, but there's a whole lot of "unlimited" plans that have caps far far far lower than that which is kinda BS.

That's not the case here, though. They advertise unlimited mobile data with a 7 GB limit on data use through tethering. I'm a T-Mobile customer on this same plan, and when I signed up, T-Mobile was completely honest and explicit about what they were offering.

These people are attempting to cause data that is contractually limited to get counted as part of their unlimited data. What T-Mobile is saying here is that they are going to start counting the data correctly — they're not going back on the unlimited data they promised.

I still think it's crazy to call a 7GB cap unlimited. Call it what it is.

Then don't call these “unlimited”, because otherwise it's a pure lie. Unlimited is unlimited.

The idea that data can fundamentally change based on how it's viewed, legally, is absurd. I hope this trend passes quickly.

There's an interesting blog post a while back called w"what color are your bits?". Kinda reminds me of what you are talking about.

http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

This. Honestly, I feel like if companies really think they have technical issues with allowing people "unlimited data", they simply shouldn't offer it. Problem solved, people can consume the data they pay for however they'd like and we don't have to keep redefining unlimited.

> The idea that data can fundamentally changed based on how it's viewed, legally, is absurd.

Data itself doesn't change, usage patterns do, and that is why restrictions like this exist. My internet connection at home is a reasonably fat 75/5Mbps 'business-class' pipe, I'm paying for a service that expects pretty high usage and the infrastructure is designed to handle it - the coaxial cable going to my house has enough bandwidth and so does the fiber going from the local cable node back to the big datacenter where my traffic eventually gets routed to the rest of the internet.

Mobile has an extremely annoying limitation in that we can't just run a cable to every phone, we want stuff to happen wirelessly! Well, since there's no wires providing service every user has to in essence share the same bandwidth coming from a cell site. We can make sure there's plenty of fiber going to each site, but physically 10Mhz of spectrum can only provide so much bandwidth, and that is a huge limiting factor of wireless service.

Your 3-6" smartphone has very different usage patterns compared to my 13" ultrabook. You may watch a couple youtube videos, stream some music, maybe even watch a movie on Netflix - but you are unlikely to do so for extended periods of time or on a frequent basis, the usage is very sporadic and lends itself well to sharing with other users.

Usage on a tethered laptop or other device is very different, I'm sitting down right now connected to my work VPN 'getting stuff done', checking email, moving large files around, downloading an update for Visual Studio, the list goes on. And this is not something that I do for 10 minutes or even an hour, this is my entire work-day, and I regularly use 10's of Gigabytes of data, something our limited wireless spectrum is not well suited to handle for a large amount of users (that's what WiFi is for!).

Unless nationwide we are going to turn a large enough block of wireless spectrum into a national wireless ISP (we're talking probably 100-200Mhz) we simply do not have enough bandwidth over the airwaves to support people with these usage patterns.

Exactly, but at the same time you need to keep a firmer leash on your marketing department to match reality.

T-Mobile is very upfront about tethering. It tells you exactly how much tether data you get.

To be fair, T-Mobile is quite explicit about the limitations. When I look at my plan options it explicitly says "7GB tethered data".

I just don't like that "tethering" is a thing at all as opposed to just "using your phone's radio".

The issue I have is that the marketing materials rarely seem to capture those nuances. And that seems kind of scummy to me.

http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/individual.html#

As an ex-T-Mobile customer, I will completely admit they do a passable job of information (especially compared to other carriers). I think mostly because they take the saner business strategy of "limited 4G + unlimited <= 3G". But the phrase "unlimited data" still appears an awfully lot on that page, without a lot of caveats...

Unlimited data isn't unlimited if they limit the devices you can use it on.

This strikes me as preemptive optimization. That's a lot of argument to back up, though I think it has merit.

I would feel much more comfortable with straight up metered internet, variably-priced based on current congestion. I would feel much more inclined to believe you if it didn't look like the service providers were trying to change the meaning of internet access—it shouldn't matter which kind of device is "plugged in". That's just terrible service.

> it shouldn't matter which kind of device is "plugged in". That's just terrible service.

For all of T-Mobile's plans except for the "unlimited" plan, it doesn't. I have 1GB of LTE data, after I use it on my device or through tethering I get throttled to EDGE and tethering is disabled until the end of my billing cycle.

Users on the "unlimited" plan only get unlimited usage on their device to prevent network congestion from people using it as their primary internet connection for their home (and there is a lot more people that would try to do this than you would think). These users get a separate 7GB bucket of tethering usage, and it is plainly spelled out when choosing a plan.

> I have 1GB of LTE data, after I use it on my device or through tethering I get throttled to EDGE and tethering is disabled until the end of my billing cycle.

I'm fine with this. I don't like calling it unlimited if it's limited to your cell phone.

In what way is it possibly beneficial to me as a user to have metered Internet for all cases rather than unlimited for most cases and metered for others?

Because, when I look around, I don't see internet being offered at a e.g. per GB rate. So I don't think your dichotomy is correct; I think people WOULD look quite favorably on metered tethered data with up-front costs as opposed to a cap with hidden metered fees or retroactive fines.

However, even if it WERE correct, I much prefer to think of internet as a service. It is incredibly frustrating to deal with tiers that are only slowly approaching the reality they use to defend the tiers themselves. I'm very open to the idea that bandwidth might be a dominating restriction, but the optimal way to deal with it would be a) transparency and b) incentivizing avoiding congestion. However, I'm afraid to tether my computer and actually take advantage of the service I'm paying for since the tools are horrible to actually figure out what the costs might be or how to avoid them.

T-Mobile offers apps with up-to-the-minute accounting of your usage, and at least with me, they were quite explicit about how everything is priced. It doesn't seem that hard or scary to me, and I've never gotten "shock" bills from them.

It's going to pass quickly by companies no longer offering "unlimited" plans of any sort. Which was always the more realistic approach to wireless data usage.

To me, AT&T (via Uverse) is the ridiculous conclusion of this. They'll happily set up a number of "wireless" (!!) HD receiver boxes that have content streamed to them over WiFi. Nowhere in the marketing materials do they ever mention this potentially having an effect on your data connections.

Most consumers just think of wireless transmission as magic with infinite bandwidth.

That said, while the above is my realistic appraisal, I do 100% agree with you that using whatever firmware hacks you can to fully utilize TMO's "unlimited" plans, while they continue to market them as that, is completely moral. If they don't want people trying to use unlimited data, then they should quit marketing it as such.

You don't get to tell lies / weasel truths and then cry when people hold you to the same expectations that made it an effective marketing campaign in the first place.

> (That said, while the above is my realistic appraisal, I do 100% agree with you that using whatever firmware hacks you can to fully utilize TMO's "unlimited" plans, while they continue to market them as that, is completely moral. If they don't want people trying to use unlimited data, then they should quit marketing it as such -- you don't get to tell lies / weasel truths and then cry when people hold you to the same expectations that made it an effective marketing campaign in the first place).

All of T-Mobile's materials explicitly state unlimited usage is for usage ON YOUR DEVICE. This is not hidden 'fine print' or misleading marketing, it's RIGHT THERE.

Don't believe me? http://i.imgur.com/tb2BYAe.png

I in fact do not believe you with regards to the majority of their marketing material. I'm glad you've found a counter-example, but I'd say the balance favors being less than transparent:

https://www.google.com/search?q=t+mobile+billboards&tbm=isch

Seems to me that T-Mobile should not be able to tell me how I use my device. The device-to-device connect (hotspot) occurs on my hardware and doesn't involve them. The data usage is all mobile usage after that, since it's coming thru my phone.

Now, T-Mobile may object to certain kinds of traffic (torrents, etc.) but that opens up a whole different can of worms. If the high-volume data consumers are actually causing a problem for other users, then T-Mobile probably should consider expanding their bandwidth with new equipment.

Trying to squirm away from the term "unlimited" because of a few inconvenient users with inconvenient bits, however, is just weaselly as hell and avoiding the real issue.

If it seems to you that T-Mobile should not be able to tell you how you use your device, then it seems to me that you should not sign a contract granting T-Mobile that permission.

The only real choice between vendors is based on price and reliability, since all of them tell you what you can and cannot do with your hardware.

The only other option is to do without and that's just not a realisitic proposition anymore. It might work for Stallman, but not for me.

> The only real choice between vendors is based on price and reliability, since all of them tell you what you can and cannot do with your hardware.

They are telling you what you can and cannot do with THEIR NETWORK. You want to go host a web server on your Nexus 6 where people are downloading multi-GB files daily? GO FOR IT! But don't expect your mobile provider to let you do it over their network.

> They are telling you what you can and cannot do with THEIR NETWORK.

The hotspot is from the phone, not the network, so the only way they can tell is if 1) the hotspot is reporting it to them or 2) they are doing packet inspection.

Either way, T-Mobile is effectively limiting what I can do with my hardware and hiding behind a bad definition of "unlimited" with the caveats intentionally buried in a wall of legalistic fine-print.

Does this seem right, ethical or moral, to you? Because it kinda smells bad to me.

> caveats intentionally buried in a wall of legalistic fine-print.

It is not buried under legalistic fine-print. They are extremely clear and up-front about what kind of usage is covered under the unlimited data and what the limits on tethering are. When you select the Unlimited plan on their website, "Includes up to 7GB Smartphone Mobile HotSpot data" is the second bullet point in the plan details.

I share your frustration with providers who lie about unlimited data, but this is not that.

I agree that there isn't anybody offering completely indiscriminate mobile data for unlimited devices and unlimited users for $80 a month. But the fact that I want a Tesla Model S for $300 and nobody in the market is offering such a thing doesn't mean I can force an existing vendor to provide me with a $100,000 car for $300.

Like, if these people want to pay for the data, they can actually use their devices however they want — T-Mobile isn't telling them they can't. T-Mobile is just saying that they aren't offering unlimited data for unlimited devices and unlimited users for $80 a month.

Consumers never look at that side of the equation. They don't read their contracts, they don't do their due diligence. They just blame the company and claim the role of victim when something doesn't work out in their favour or when the company does things like ask people to not abuse the network.

Then again the idea of having alternatives (for anything) is fantasy in the current state of the world.

The party with more resources has the advantage -- information and power asymmetry falls in their favor.

Of course consumers don't "do their due diligence", because they'd have to do so 1000s of times a day. This is a large part of why we have consumer protection laws in the first place.

I don't sign 2 year cell phone contracts "1000's of times a day" and when I do sign them I read them because they're really not that long. And if I don't read them and something doesn't work out in my favour I don't pretend it's the phone company's fault.

Consumer protection laws do not remove all responsibility from the consumer to be aware of what they are getting into.

What percentage of consumers do you think are capable of reading contract language accurately, assessing risk/value, judging things like how much bandwidth they use, doing what, and how that may increase or decrease?

Likewise, how many lawyers working for cell phone companies are capable of reading contract language accurately? How capable do you think cell phone companies are at projecting data utilization based on the huge trove of customer data they have available to them?

Requiring honesty around simple terms like "unlimited" helps level that playing field, at least in some small way.

It's not really a contract, as there is no mutual meeting of minds and no opportunity for negotiation on part of the weaker party.

It is technically a contract of adhesion.

And when the market only offers a 'choice' of providers all mandating the same terms... where's the choice?

Judges will sometimes look skeptically on contracts of adhesion because of the power imbalance, but in this case, this term is not particularly unreasonable or surprising. If you want Internet for an unlimited number of devices and an unlimited number of users, everybody is going to want you to pay more because that will be more of a burden on the provider on average than just offering data for one mobile phone. I don't know what judge would look at that and say, "Wow, nobody would have ever agreed to this contract if they'd realized that was in there."

The problem is selling "unlimited" anything. Every data provider's marketing department insist they have to offer "unlimited" data because all their competitors do it. Unfortunately it's not actually possible for any of them.

How about the FTC do their fucking job and actually enforce these unlimited plans? Then all the carriers will stop with the shell game and sell bandwidth the only way it's feasible - metered.

Can you imagine if your power company was offering "unlimited" electricity?

The government fought hard to keep internet unlimited to encourage growth. Do you think that is no longer a noble goal?

I have never thought that setting up false billing infinities that are easily exploitable was ever a good idea.

People that think bandwidth is free are operating under a ludicrous interpretation of the facts.

Ever increasing bandwidth requires constant capital expenditure to upgrade the infrastructure. The bandwidth fairies do not show up at night to sprinkle pixie dust on your cable modem. If someone thinks it does not, I invite them to dust off their 56K modem and connect to the infrastructure of yesteryear.

Now, I am all for cheap internet and requiring unbundled access and creating an environment that encourages competition. But to advocate "unlimited" plans that then require all kinds of loopholes for dealing with people actually taking advantage of the impossible, well, that's just wasting everyone's time and money.

The electricity metaphor doesn't work. Electricity is a consumable, it costs money to generate and that value is destroyed when you use it. Data is not a consumable because it does not cost anything to created a copy - in fact you might argue that using data creates value. The only similarly between commercial electrical and data networks is that both make you pay for the size of the wire that goes to your house. Electrical networks also make you pay per unit energy that moves through that wire, in order to fund the generation of it. But such a charge doesn't make sense for a data network, because your ISP doesn't supply the data, only the wire.

I don't think it would hurt their business to say something like :

   120GB of data (compared to verizon's 12GB)

If they are being honest and really are only worried about people using 2TB, then this should solve the problem completely.

120GB would be unlimited for 99.99% of users.

I'm guessing people in the marketing department would disagree. They'd argue that a lot of consumers don't know how much a gigabyte is so even a comparison between 120GB and 12GB is less appealing to them than a simple term: "Unlimited"

They actually do say "unlimited phone, and 7GB tethering". It's very explicit, and limited tethering is a specific part of the "unlimited phone" plans. And as the article says, if you want more tethering, you are able to add and pay for that separately. The issue is people bypassing the tethering limitations.

This is the reason that I always take a very sceptical view on mobile contracts that offer "unlimited" data.

I wonder if they'll be allowed to continue calling it "unlimited" here in the UK after this revelation.

ASA ruled that unlimited doesn't mean unlimited and can be used in adverts when referring to limited plans.

https://www.asa.org.uk/News-resources/Hot-Topics/~/media/Fil...

All you can do is keep sending complaints and encourage others to keep sending complaints. They do, apparently, occasionally take notice of complaints.

Labeling people as thieves is manipulative & hypocritical when the marketing literature claims "unlimited" data.

All TMobile needs to do is tell the truth & have a reasonable plan for high bandwidth customers. Instead they treat these customers like criminals & turn into the data gestapo.

In the meantime, TMobile seems to be quite profitable.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/t-mobile-raises-subscriber-growt...

Wait - so TMO monitors your data usage and throttles you down when you exceed your cap on a phone, but doesn't do this for hotspots and trusts the hotspot to police the data cap?

No, I think the phone sends a certain bit to their servers when you're tethering, to say "this data is from tethering", and they only allow a certain cap for that. These "omg hackers" found a way to prevent that bit from being sent, forcing the carrier to make good on their promise of "unlimited data", which the carrier doesn't want to do.

Thanks for the clarification.

As a TMO subscriber I've never had a problem with TMO's "unlimited data". What's the problem with throttling down once you've hit your cap? You still get data, just at 3G/4G speed and not LTE. IMO if you're pulling that much data from the tower then yeah, you should probably pay up because you're screwing it up for everyone else.

This seems like a totally easy problem for TMO to fix, but I wonder why they haven't done it until now.

you get 3G/4G speeds when you hit the cap? I've only ever gotten EDGE.

> forcing the carrier to make good on their promise of "unlimited data"

I'm on the fence about what I think about the announcement itself (because of the implications around enforcement), but this is a pretty untenable argument if you want to get into "promises", or, who's really breaking their contract.

Contractually, the promise is unlimited data without tethering. Explicitly. If we want to talk about who's breaking what promises by rooting phones to bypass tethering data limits, it's actually the "omg hackers".

How do they know it's people tethering? How do they know it's not someone just doing all their downloading on the phone and then transferring it to the computer or whatnot?

The only clue they have that these people were tethering was that they used 2 TB, but they may just as well have been watching a lot of Netflix on their tablet.

Netflix on tablets pulls down different data than Netflix on a laptop; if you look at the actual traffic you can probably figure it out pretty quickly.

> The only clue they have that these people were tethering was that they used 2 TB

That's not true, and it's kind of uncharitable of you to assign malice and technical incompetence to T-Mobile. There can be all kinds of differences in the tethered traffic patterns vs. native phone traffic. For example:

- Differences in IP TTL of packets

- Differences in TCP options, advertised windows, and so on

- Differences in packet ordering / RTTs (if you've got interleaved TCP flows one which is terminated at the phone and one which isn't, you'd see the terminated packets being acknowledged sooner)

- Differences in the application layer data (for example the user agent field)

The people who are camouflaging their tethering would of course try to apply countermeasures against as many things as possible. But if they miss one kind of fingerprint, it could be used to detect the tethering. That'd be the case if it's a signal that'd be hard to deal with by a realtime automated system, but requires some kind of expensive offline analysis.

90% sure the work around was to change your user-agent to something that was mobile. That was all the filtering they had in place for a long time. If they detected a desktop user-agent then they'd throttle/stop it.

So SSL was never throttled? Seems like there's got to be more to it than that. Like a TTL value on the packets?

If you prevent that "this data is from tethering" bit from being set and do nothing else, T-Mobile will block your traffic. They've been slowly ramping up detection of tether hiding for a while now. They at least do UA detection (for HTTP connections) and TTL monitoring. I'm not sure how they plan to deal with the endgame of "everything tunneled through a VPN".

This is incorrect. When you are a 'normal' XGB of high speed data plan your mobile device usage and tethered usage come out of the same bucket, you get 1-5GB (depending on plan) of high-speed data usage, after you hit your limit you are unable to use the Mobile Hotspot feature of your smartphone until your billing cycle rolls over.

Unlimited smartphone users are in a different situation, they have "unlimited" un-throttled mobile data usage, and 7GB of Mobile Hotspot usage.

To accurately measure Mobile Hotspot data usage, your phone connects to a separate data access point when Mobile Hotspot is turned on - but there are people who are using third-party tethering applications that simply use the 'standard' access point, allowing users on "unlimited" plans to skirt around the 7GB Mobile Hotspot limit.

T-Mobile EXPLICITLY advertises the "unlimited" plan only applies to usage ON YOUR PHONE, not on any tethered devices. They have every right to curb people using their service in this fashion.

That makes way more sense, thanks.

> but there are people who are using third-party tethering applications

Actually, I think it's more common to simply tell Android to not send tethered data to a special "tethering" APN.

Frankly, I bought my phone, I can configure it how I want to, and I see no reason to allow T-Mobile to configure my phone for me.

You can configure your phone however you want, the service provider giving your phone access to their network is within every right to say that you must have it configured within their specifications or you cannot use their service.

I noticed that when I hit my tethering cap, and start seeing an upsell page, my Linux vms can still access content like normal. Seems that they do all of their fancy tracking via user agent strings and consider Linux browsers as being smart phones.

If true, it means that Linux users might end up getting accused of being ToS breaking "hackers." Beware.

I wouldn't be surprised if how these "Hackers" were getting around the data limits was far from sophisticated.

I've ended up getting around somewhat similar restrictions accidentally due to poor implementations.

Can someone clarify this for me (still haven't finished my coffee yet): If T-Mobile is offering "Unlimited Mobile Hotspot" data as a part of their plans then how exactly is this stealing?

they don't offer "unlimited mobile hotspot". They explicitly say hotspot usage is limited.

What's unlimited is "non hotspot usage" (i.e. regular app usage). One might view this as splitting hairs (and I'm somewhat sympathetic to that view).

The very first sentence of the article says that they in fact don't offer unlimited tethering, but that their "unlimited data" plan has explicit language limiting tethering to a few GB, while traffic coming from the actual mobile device is unlimited. That seems fair enough.

Technically speaking, it's all data coming from the mobile device. Hotspotting occurs on my device without their involvement since it's a feature of the hardware, not the cellular network.

In effect, T-Mobile sells you a device and then rents out the capability of your own device.

One right way to do it is to put a hard cap on data usage but then they couldn't use the term "unlimited" and T-Mobile would lose customers.

The other right way to do is soft-cap all data coming from the device, which would allow "unlimited".

They aren't. They're offering unlimited mobile data with a limited hotspot feature.

They don't advertise unlimited hot spot. They advertise unlimited data for your mobile device and 6gb of hot spot data. Some users are cheating and masking their hot spot data used by multiple PCs and sometimes servers to get around the 6gb limit without having to pay for the additional hot spot data.

You actually don't have to do any masking, it just works. It's not like your phone tells T-Mobile's servers when you start tethering, or they can detect tethering through DPI. It all looks the same to them. So when they accuse customers of "cheating" because they neglected to obey a hidden clause in a contract they didn't read, it comes across as insulting.

You can totally detect tethering through packet inspection. There's big differences between mobile and desktop tcp/ip traffic, not to mention wildly different application data fingerprints. It should actually be really easy for them.

They probably just can't justify the cost. The licensing and additional tools and support may cost hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, for a small section of their customer base, and they have millions of users. So the loss of a marginal amount of extra data use probably is not greater than the cost of looking for and terminating tetherers. (Plus competitive advantage, etc)

Well, technically there is an aspect of the underlying network protocol called time-to-live or TTL. Unless manipulated this value is decremented by each device in the chain on devices between your phone and your carrier. When tethering this value is then lower than it would be if the traffic were source from rather than through your device. Thus, the manipulation to which they refer typically refers to manipulating this value.

Android's built in tethering absolutely does explicitly tell T-Mobile you're using it. http://danielpocock.com/android-betrays-tethering-data

> They advertise unlimited data for your mobile device and 6gb of hot spot data.

They do? The vast majority of T-mobile's ads that I've seen are focused on how other data plans from other carriers are "limited", and are not really unlimited, and how T-mobile is the only carrier that offers a real unlimited plan. Quite hypocritical at the moment.

The article tries to weasel around it too,

> T-Mobile only says it offers unlimited data for standard phone or tablet use. It clearly spells out the limitations

"clearly", being,

> Unlimited talk, text, and data while on our network in the U.S., plus in Mexico and Canada. Up to 1GB of 4G LTE data (Speeds reduced after 1GB)

> Up to 1GB of 4G LTE data per month. 4G LTE data is available while in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. After all your 4G LTE data is used, data speeds are reduced to 2G speeds through the end of your bill cycle. Add more 4G LTE data whenever you want.

Clearly, "clearly" here means you must delve into the 10 pixel legal disclaimer:

> Full speeds available up to monthly allotment, including tethering (Unlimited on-smartphone 4G LTE data option includes 7 GB of tethering); then, slowed to up to 2G speeds for rest of billing cycle.

The article goes on,

> of the "Smartphone Mobile Hotspot" feature, which is included for free in the data plan.

"included for free": it's a software capability of your device; T-mobile is providing nothing.

I've been cut off for "too much tether" well before the 7GB mark (it was either 512MiB or 2GiB; I've forgotten now…). Frankly, I'm wondering if this isn't one of those living ToS that's been changed a few times. Makes me wonder if I have a hardcopy of the agreement I actually agreed to.

The biggest thing they offer that other carriers are missing is that your kids won't run up a $1000 bill on their service, nor will they be shut off when they hit the cap.

This is all spelled out quite clearly on their website when choosing a plan: http://i.imgur.com/tb2BYAe.png

edit:

> Makes me wonder if I have a hardcopy of the agreement I actually agreed to.

T-Mobile still has the industry standard "right to make changes" verbiage in all of their service agreements, you get notified via bill inserts of any changes their make to the T&C's and have 30 days to cancel service without penalty if any materially adverse changes have been made.

You are correct, in all regards. (I also pay automatically, making such methods of informing the user rather ineffectual.) I am not clear that they are required to inform you. The current terms state,

> Your Service is subject to our business policies, practices, and procedures, which we can change without notice.

but go on,

> WE WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH AT LEAST 30 DAYS' NOTICE OF ANY CHANGE WARRANTING CANCELLATION OF THE AFFECTED LINE OF SERVICE AND YOU MUST NOTIFY US OF YOUR INTENT TO CANCEL SERVICE WITHIN 14 DAYS AFTER YOU RECEIVE THE NOTICE, OR AS OTHERWISE PROVIDED IN THE NOTICE.

It is not clear to me how the statements "We can change without notice" and "We will provide you with […] notice" are not contradictory.

> This is all spelled out quite clearly on their website when choosing a plan

I only see that screen if I explicitly click on "Comparison chart"; if I simply select the plan, I never see that; nonetheless, I concede that it is there, if hidden.

Since finding a hardcopy of my agreed terms is utterly hopeless, I looked it up via the Wayback Machine: At the time that I signed up with the plan[1], it was "Unlimited" with no qualifications, and none appeared even in the fine print, AFAICT (correct me again, if I'm wrong). I'll concede that the terms allow changes at any time, and while it may be within their right to do so, I still find it morally objectionable; AFAICT, such terms exist in nearly every contract a person agrees to these days, from renting to cell phones to ISPs; what choice have I?

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20111231100541/http://prepaid-ph...

T-Mobile is not required to notify you of any changes to the terms that are not materially adverse, i.e. do not change your pricing or the service that you actually receive. Changes like this are normally just clarification, restructuring of the T&C's, etc.

Any materially adverse changes must be disclosed to you, per the policy listed in the T&C's.

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