T-Mobile Ups Monthly Threshold for Congestion-Based Throttling to 50GB (Sep 19, 2017)

T-Mobile has announced that it’s raising the monthly usage threshold for de-prioritization during times of congestion from 32GB to 50 GB. By way of background, this threshold comes into play when customers have exceeded that amount of data consumed in a given month and then try to use the T-Mobile network in a congested area, at which point their access to the network gets prioritized below that of other users who haven’t likewise exceeded the threshold. T-Mobile had previously said that only around 3% of its customers used over the 32GB threshold, and now says just 1% of its customers use 50GB or more in a month, and of course not all of those will actually end up using the network at a congested time and place. As such, like unlimited plans in general, this announcement is solely about peace of mind for the vast majority of customers, rather than something that’s actually going to impact them in any meaningful way. It does put T-Mobile’s threshold well above those of the other carriers, so this is a useful marketing point that will cost the company essentially nothing. More broadly, of course, T-Mobile continues to have far fewer customers than either of its two larger rivals, which means it has excess capacity on its network which makes offering free and discounted services much more economically viable than it is for AT&T and Verizon, which tend to have to be more conservative in their offers.

via T-Mobile


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