How fast is your T-Mobile connection? Now you can get an honest answer.

T-Mobile doesn't charge customers extra for exceeding their monthly data limits, but it does slow their connection speeds. Under a new agreement between T-Mobile and the FCC, T-Mobile won't keep speed test applications from showing the actual speeds of slowed connections.

|
Reuters/File
T-Mobile has agreed to show accurate information about its network speeds, even for customers whose speeds are being throttled.

T-Mobile is one of the only major US wireless carriers that doesn’t charge customers extra for exceeding a monthly data limit. But it does slow down connection speeds once customers hit a monthly limit – and that slowdown, known as “throttling,” reduces 4G LTE speeds from around 38 Mbps all the way down to 0.1 to 0.06 Mbps.

The only catch: until now, speed test applications were exempted from T-Mobile’s throttling, so a test to see just how slow your connection was would show everything humming along at regular 4G speeds.

Enough T-Mobile customers complained to the Federal Communications Commission about this practice that the FCC began looking into how T-Mobile discloses network information. T-Mobile and the Commission reached an agreement, and on Monday the FCC announced that T-Mobile will be more honest going forward about how fast customer data speeds are, even after those customers have blown through their monthly data limits.

Under the new agreement, T-Mobile will text customers when they’ve reached their monthly high-speed data limit, letting them know that their speed will be reduced for the rest of the month. The text message will include a link to a speed test that will accurately measure a customer’s reduced speed. T-Mobile will also include a speed test app on its smart phones that will return accurate information about reduced network speeds.

This agreement doesn’t cover all speed tests: some applications will still measure T-Mobile’s full network speed potential, rather than an individual subscriber’s throttled connection speed.

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge found those omissions troubling, saying in a statement that consumers should be able to test network speeds using whatever application they wish. “If T-Mobile is truly confident that they are managing their network responsibly,” the group said in a statement, “Public Knowledge hopes that they will free their subscribers to test their network connection with an application that they trust, not one that was pre-approved by T-Mobile.”

The agreement between the FCC and T-Mobile is important because it relates to transparency, the only one of the FCC’s three Open Internet principles that survived a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year. While the FCC considers new net neutrality rules, groups such as Public Knowledge have tried to use the transparency rule to ensure that wireless companies are treating consumers fairly. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler sent letters to the four major wireless companies this summer, asking them to reconsider their speed-reduction practices.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to How fast is your T-Mobile connection? Now you can get an honest answer.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2014/1125/How-fast-is-your-T-Mobile-connection-Now-you-can-get-an-honest-answer
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe