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Comment by drivingmenuts | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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