How to tell what your real and throttled data speed are like on T-Mobile
One of the things I really like about T-Mobile is its transparency. Most of the time (not all of the time, but mostly), it is super clear about its plans, pricing, and data speeds – it even allows users to perform speed tests on its network without taking the data used out of users’ high speed data buckets.
While it’s certainly great that T-Mobile does that, the result is that these speed tests also don’t necessarily reflect a user’s speeds when he or she is being throttled. Instead, a user is shown the full speeds that are currently available on the network. That’s not necessarily very transparent.
T-Mobile has clarified its practice in this regard, although its buried deep in the documentation on its help site. Here it is, front and center.
These speed test apps will show the network’s current full speed, regardless of whether or not you are being throttled:
These speed test apps will show your current throttled speed, regardless of what the network is actually capable of:
This is good to know, because T-Mobile used to whitelist RootMetrics, but now it no longer does. (This could also explain why RootMetrics’s scores for T-Mobile are consistently lower than other speed test rankings.)
[T-Mobile]
