T-Mobile calling its data heavy customers thieves
T-Mobile CEO John Legere, is defending its creative definition of “unlimited” by calling customers who use tethering apps thieves.
This following a rant on his Twitter feed telling the world he won’t stand for network abuse. and that it’s only the tethering thieves who are abusing the network.
In that, T-Mobile, ATT, and Sprint are now on the same page – plans called “unlimited” with limits of how you can use the data, which isn’t a particularly glowing set of company for T-Mobile to be in.
Please note, I have no problem with a company moving to protect its network, I just take issue with the marketing department misappropriation of the word “unlimited,” and calling people who pay you for service thieves.
Considering the mass amount of data transmitted in these abuses is probably torrent data/movies, and there are torrent clients available that work pretty darn well for any smartphone out there, the question becomes how they’re determining that it’s someone with a computer hooked up to a rooted smartphone as opposed to just a guy with uTorrent, Private Internet Access, and no particular fear of the MPAA wandering around all day seeding movies, apps, games, etc.
The question also becomes in the new T-Mobile glossary of terms whether or not they’re using the Oxford comma and calling people who root their phones abusers, or people who download third party apps in general.
It seems like this could have been handled by simply stating “we’re cutting off people who are using more data than 99.99% of T-Mobile users because they’re using the service in a manner not conducive to the health of our network and impacting other customer’s experience. We’d love to have truly unlimited data, but the age we still live in this is a promise no carrier can keep and maintain the overall user experience.”
Instead, use a tethering app, you’re a thief. They made a nice graphic to show you that you are. I bet you’re reading this on a web browser on a computer that’s tethered to your smartphone you thief.
Now the question becomes how many of the “unlimited” customers are just going to slap a torrent client on their phone and use 1.99 terabytes of data just to see if they’ll get terminated as a thieving tetherer.
As a note, evidently 3000 T-Mobile customers are using over 2000 gigabytes a month, and this is what prompted this.
I wonder when any good has ever come of calling people who pay you money for a creatively defined set of services thieves.
Anyway, good on T-Mobile for moving to protect their network, bad on them for slandering some data pigs.
