"Data overage fees are greedy and predatory"

Forums › New Zealand Mobile and Wireless › "Data overage fees are greedy and predatory" - T-Mobile CEO

Lias

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#143438 15-Apr-2014 07:59

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/t-mobile-is-sorry-for-charging-greedy-predatory-fees-will-mostly-stop/

"T-Mobile US CEO John Legere today said that data overage fees are greedy and predatory and that the company plans to stop charging them."

Obviously US-based, but a great sign that the evil idea of data charges are on the way out. Roll out unlimited data on all broadband plans, be they wired or cellular.

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sbiddle

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#1025348 15-Apr-2014 08:24

You mean the US, the home of capped data? The world is moving towards caps, not away from them. People are finally realising that unlimited data simply doesn't make sense.

Despite what people may want to think, the US is not the home of unlimited data. The latest Gigaom stats show 64% of US connections are on capped plans, with that increasing to 78% after the proposed merger of Time Warner cable and Comcast.

NonprayingMantis

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#1025351 15-Apr-2014 08:31

You think removing overage means you will get unlimited data?

Did you even read the article?

"Lust last week, T-Mobile announced a Simple Starter plan for $40 a month, which includes unlimited talk and text and up to 500MB of 4G data with "no data overage charges." Hitting the 500MB cap without buying more bits results in data services being turned off. After a user hits the cap, "the service is suspended, with the peace of mind that no overage fees will apply," T-Mobile said. To get additional data, customers have to pay for "on-demand data passes." The company doesn't call that an "overage" fee since it doesn't get billed automatically."

This is no different to what Vodafone already has in NZ, and I'm pretty sure 2D and Telecom too, or something very similar.

"T-Mobile's Simple Choice plans start at $50 a month for 1GB of data and unlimited talk and text. There are no automatic fees for using data after that first gigabyte, but the speed is dropped from 4G to 2G unless the customer chooses to pay for extra 4G data."

And this is just throttling. Yes, techinically dropping you down to 2G allows you to have 'unlimited' data, but that's no different to how fixed ISPs in NZ do data caps in many cases (back to dialup speeds) and you don't see them calling that 'unlimited' because that would be ridiculous.

johnr

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#1025374 15-Apr-2014 08:52

This is why Vodafone introduced Data Angel / Flexi Data

MikeB4

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#1025383 15-Apr-2014 09:04

We could have no data caps, low monthly contract rates and general give aways galore etc etc , however we would eventually have no Telco's.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Lias

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#1025526 15-Apr-2014 12:42

johnr: This is why Vodafone introduced Data Angel / Flexi Data

Strangely enough I was actually thinking of Vodafone's fixed line overage when I said "evil idea of data charges".

I don't expect all plans to be unlimited (but I do think there is very much a place in the market for these), but I do expect to see _all_ plans be they wired or wireless in NZ move away from "bill shock" data charges. All plans either need to be unlimited data, or throttle data, or simply cut off data services until a topup datapack is purchased. Consumers should simply not get "bill shock".

crazed

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#1025847 15-Apr-2014 21:34

The answer is not unlimited data, but decent size caps, based on the amount of data now used by apps, media etc. the US has been moving towards caps for some time, however some ISP's are brining in sizable caps, that still allow freedom to do what you like, but within reason. NZ's data caps however are the complete opposite, Not enough data for modern day reasonable web usage.

Its good to see ISP's like Vodafone etc now listening to the consumers and increasing their data offerings to decent reasonable levels. Its just taken a long time for them to actually listen.

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Yabanize

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#1025868 15-Apr-2014 22:20

NonprayingMantis:
"Lust last week, T-Mobile announced a Simple Starter plan for $40 a month, which includes unlimited talk and text and up to 500MB of 4G data with "no data overage charges." Hitting the 500MB cap without buying more bits results in data services being turned off. After a user hits the cap, "the service is suspended, with the peace of mind that no overage fees will apply," T-Mobile said. To get additional data, customers have to pay for "on-demand

Skinny started doing Exactly this last year. Good on them

sbiddle

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#1025952 16-Apr-2014 08:02

crazed: The answer is not unlimited data, but decent size caps, based on the amount of data now used by apps, media etc. the US has been moving towards caps for some time, however some ISP's are brining in sizable caps, that still allow freedom to do what you like, but within reason. NZ's data caps however are the complete opposite, Not enough data for modern day reasonable web usage.

Its good to see ISP's like Vodafone etc now listening to the consumers and increasing their data offerings to decent reasonable levels. Its just taken a long time for them to actually listen.

That's if you share the view caps are an issue.

Average NZ data usage for fixed line (depending on exactly who's stats you look at) is anywhere from 20GB to 30GB per month. US internet users aren't using significantly more than this, despite most having "unlimited" plans, of which 60 odd percet have caps somewhere in the vicinity of 250GB.

Those who want 200+ GB caps need to realise they're still in the minority of internet users, not the majority.

johnr

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#1025953 16-Apr-2014 08:05

My parents are on VDSL getting over 40Mbps down and 10 up and use under 1GB per month out of 80GB

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#1025954 16-Apr-2014 08:07

sbiddle: Average NZ data usage for fixed line (depending on exactly who's stats you look at) is anywhere from 20GB to 30GB per month. US internet users aren't using significantly more than this, despite most having "unlimited" plans, of which 60 odd percet have caps somewhere in the vicinity of 250GB.

Current 64% of Internet users in the USA have a cap and if Comcast merger with Time Warner goes ahead this is about to get around 75 -80%.

Edit: ooops, Steve posted these numbers already.

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old3eyes

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#1025957 16-Apr-2014 08:30

johnr: My parents are on VDSL getting over 40Mbps down and 10 up and use under 1GB per month out of 80GB

Bit of a waste of VDSL then..

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MikeB4

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#1025963 16-Apr-2014 08:41

johnr: My parents are on VDSL getting over 40Mbps down and 10 up and use under 1GB per month out of 80GB

They are soooooooooooooooooo greedy shame on them

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Aredwood

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#1042673 12-May-2014 21:22

Im paying $120 per month for my internet. That gets me 400GB of data over a 100/50Mbit UFB connection. And any data used between 1am and 7am doesn't count towards the cap. So far my household has used 160GB of the cap. And has also used 107GB of late night uncapped data. And there is only a week left until plan rollover day. I say that $120 is definitely reasonable. Especially as 1 of the flatmates managed to do a speedtest which reported a ping of just 2ms.