Nothing in this world is limitless–not even T-Mobile’s unlimited data plan. On Monday T-Mobile CEO John Legere went on Twitter and announced that the company would be banning 1/100 percent of its users that Legere believes is abusing their unlimited data plans.
THE ABUSERS OF UNLIMITED DATA
Legere said this ban would only affect an extremely small number of T-Mobile subscribers, and that the abuse was mostly coming from users who were taking advantage of the company’s tethering feature. Tethering is a feature that let’s people use their phones like hotspots: emitting data out to other wireless devices like a tablet or a laptop. This let’s the abusers essentially have a “free” home network so they don’t need to pay for additional internet packages through an internet service provider (ISP).
READ MORE NEWS FROM T-MOBILE HERE!
“They are ‘hacking’ the system to swipe high speed tethered data,” wrote Legere in a recent blog post on the subject. “These aren’t naive amateurs; they are clever hackers who are willfully stealing for their own selfish gain.”
HOW THEY’RE PULLING IT OFF
Now, to be upfront, T-Mobile gives users a monthly allowance of data that can be tethered. That’s usually around five gigabytes of data, which is plenty for most people. You can get a lot accomplished on a laptop over the course of a month and never even come near that amount of data… at least, not until you start streaming media content.
These “hackers” are using the tethering feature to use up to two terabytes in some cases, which is well over the allotted amount. Typically, once a user reaches their limit then T-Mobile will throttle their data, which means their download and upload speeds will see a pretty noticeable decrease. In order to circumvent this, the “hackers” are using apps that allow them to hide their usage from T-Mobile, so the company never actually sees how much data is being used by the user.
WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS
T-Mobile is currently the last of the major carriers that offers an unlimited data plan, and abuse like this is exactly why the other carriers have jumped ship. AT&T discontinued their unlimited plans in 2010, and Verizon did too around the same time. One key difference between AT&T’s unlimited data plan and T-Mobile’s is data throttling. On T-Mobile, regardless of how much data you use, they have a plan that will never throttle a user’s data on their smartphone, but AT&T’s would have a soft cap.
Fortunately, T-Mobile isn’t planning to pull the plug on unlimited as of right now. Legere said T-Mobile would contact the “hackers” in an attempt to find a solution.
