You may have noticed that “unlimited†data plans usually come with an asterisk â€" the speed at which you get the data slows to a crawl after you have used a certain amount of data. But T-Mobile is reversing the trend.
T-Mobile said it would offer a 4G unlimited data plan that has no cap or throttling, which is when carriers slow down the speed that data is sent once a person has used a certain amount. It's a way of limiting unlimited use.
This gets really complicated because the rules differ not only by network, but by device. So the data cap can be different for a phone, tablet, or portable hotspot.
Just looking at smartphones, AT&T doesn't have an unlimited plan anymore, but people gr andfathered under the old phone plan would have data slowed down after using 3 gigabytes.
Verizon no longer has an unlimited plan either. Customers who have the older 3G or 4G unlimited plan can keep the plan if they pay full retail price for new phones (that's really expensive). Customers who keep the old 3G unlimited plan may get slower data speeds when they are trying to connect to a heavily used cell tower.
Sprint does offer unlimited data on Smartphones without throttling. Smartphone plans start at $80 for unlimited text and data with 450 voice minutes. Calling another mobile phone â€" on any network â€" does not count against the 450 voice minutes.
Adding to the pricing confusion, the T-Mobile plans currently listed include the $60 a month “Unlimited â€" Plus†plan which is throttled after 2 GB of data is used. The least expensive plan listed without a limit is the $70 a month Unlimited Nationwide 4G plan (even worse, those exact same plans are l isted at a higher cost under the “individual plans†tab on the Web page, so make sure to click on the “value packages†tab).
There is a more fundamental problem with T-Mobile's service, though. “T-Mobile is offering this on a relatively mature HSPA+ network that doesn't have the throughput potential that AT&T and Verizon offer with LTE,†said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, which follows consumer technology. That is to say, even without throttling, T-Mobile is already likely to be slower than the competitors.
Of course, T-Mobile's commercials have stressed the speed of its network, but in my highly unscientific tests it hasn't lived up to the claim.
“I want to be clear it's a very capable network,†said Mr. Rubin, but maybe not for every purpose. “It might be fast enough for standard definition video but maybe not high definition video,†he said.
