Technology

Law requires 25Mbps home Internet. T-Mobile lowers speed to 600Kbps after 50GB cap.

I use TMobile and do Internet using teathed data from my phone. That's MY cap... I'm doing fine every month for a couple of days until I hit 50GB, and then it's 600Kbps for the rest of the month. It's kind of miserable, but I can watch YouTube at 360p usually. The minimum cost, with minimal phone service: ~ $80/month . And I've tried throwing money at TMobile but they don't offer better service to PAYING customers, let alone their charity cases.

We really need to mandate serious fines for companies that violate trust regulations, like 20% of the estimated annual profits (based on the previous five years) or 5% of the company's valuation. You know, the way a traffic ticket is about a week's pay.

If their contempt of law is recurring or particularly egregious, nationalize the fucker.

US is a weird country.

I live in EU, and I haven't even heard of bandwidth quotas on home fiber. Cheap mobile subscriptions have some, though. But mostly it's just no limit.

Reminder that net neutrality is dead. I use a VPN because otherwise my ISP decides on my behalf when I've had enough 1080p YouTube and slows down specifically that connection

This is one reason why privacy is important, companies knowing your info directly impacts your wallet.

Municipal Broadband would be nice to have.

So they broke the law, so somebody there who signed off on this will be going to jail, right?

Right?

From the linked press release:

Governor Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced an agreement with T-Mobile USA, Inc. (T-Mobile), requiring the company to improve and expand the home internet service it offers eligible New Yorkers under the New York Affordable Broadband Act (ABA).

As a result of OAG’s investigation, T-Mobile will remove the data caps associated with its ABA plans and deliver 25 Mbps download speeds to all ABA plan subscribers, unless network congestion requires temporary reductions. In addition, T-Mobile will offer ABA plans in all areas where it provides home internet service and make its ABA plan webpage discoverable by search engines.

WHERE'S THE MOTHERFUCKING PUNISHMENT?! All I see is where they're making T-mobile pinky-promise to start following the law they've been breaking all this time, while being allowed to keep every single goddamn penny of their ill-gotten gains!

NO mention of prison time for executives.

NO mention of punitive fines.

NO mention even of restitution to wronged customers, which is less than the bare fucking minimum!!!

The only even slightly useful part of that press release is this at the bottom, because every New Yorker should be absolutely livid about this weak-ass corporatist shit:

Contact the Governor’s Press Office
Contact us by phone:
Albany: (518) 474-8418
New York City: (212) 681-4640

Contact us by email:
Press.Office@exec.ny.gov

Calling it affordable broadband while throttling people to 600 Kbps after 50 GB is like selling a discounted bus pass that turns into a pair of shoes after four rides. And hiding the plan from search engines? Apparently the cheapest way to provide low income internet is making sure nobody can find it.

This is exactly why I refuse to even consider those silly hot spot cellular based services for your home. They spend decades capping and throttling that shit. There is no trust there.

50 GB? That’s a couple iOS or other OS update, or just streaming video a lot. A quick check shows my house over 500GB last month.

ISPs doing dirty tactics, what else is new?

The same companies who display in the open "up to" on all of their plans. Their speeds are never guaranteed.

Artificial static throughput caps on modern networks are asinine and archaic, especially on shared mediums.

Network providers should permit shared best effort throughput, with a sliding temporal window which keeps a tally of usage and feeds into a ratcheting deprioritisation of slot allocations. This would permit short bursts of maximum throughput, which is more efficient and frees the channel quicker, and slots longer transfers into the remaining default channel space.

Differentiate service based on the dimensions of the monitored and enforced windows, not an arbitrary static sphincter.

what's funny is all these internet companies can just give everyone affordable high speed and still make a profit