T-Mobile insists it is not throttling unlimited data customers
T-Mobile announced its Q1 2015 results earlier today, and the numbers are certainly impressive – with 1.8 million total net ads and only 1.3% postpaid churn (a record low for the company), and eight consecutive quarters of over 1 million adds to postpaid, the company is in a fine position to succeed and continue shaking things up. It’s also officially the number three carrier (even if it already was last quarter, depending on whom you asked).
But not everyone is so thrilled – a Reddit thread absolutely exploded last night with accusations of throttling for T-Mobile’s unlimited 4G LTE customers. CEO John Legere was quick to respond, and his remarks on the matter from the earnings call appear below.
This starts around the 59:00 mark in the video below:
First of all, I want to make sure you understand, those of you that are writing in as well, you are heard. I did read the Reddit trend on this, and see what’s going on. I’ve seen it starting to fuel on social media. And I would just tell you that, from my observation, there are multiple issues being talked about at the same time that have nothing to do with each other. I want to reiterate that our unlimited 4G LTE customers, we do not throttle. You know, so that’s the thing that people are hovering around.
And I did see the Reddits and the social media definitions about individual customers who happened to be high users who are showing very low speeds. And one of the things that, you know, that is being conversed – and I’ll give you a solution in a second – is that, very well publicized, only in areas where our network is completely congested for short periods of time – could be seconds, could be minutes, could be periods of time where large volumes of people are – that the network management practice is, how do we clear out the congestion at a time when nobody has speeds.
And I think what I’m watching happening is, we must have some high volume users who are in congested areas who are looking at their speeds and believing that they are being throttled, and putting several items together there on the threads. But I want to reiterate: we do not throttle 4G LTE unlimited customers. And what I think we’ve decided to do, I’ve talked with the team this morning, is we’re gonna set up a, some sort of a separate forum. Maybe we’ll do a Reddit AMA, or we’ll do a periscope discussion. Just to deep dive into this, so we don’t give you a short answer. But for those of you that are trying to connect this together, and say hey, is T-Mobile throttling – we’re not throttling. And so, let’s take that off to the side, but also make sure you understand that your comments on Reddit, your comments on Twitter, and various forms of email and social media – we are seeing all of them.
In other words, what’s happening here is that T-Mobile is priotizing the data of high usage customers on during certain times, and in certain places, when a high amount of congestion occurs. This is so that everyone can still enjoy a somewhat usable data connection – it’s not technically throttling, per se, but it still affects users’ download speeds. What do you think?
[T-Mobile | Reddit]
