Legal Research

T-Mobile data cap fiasco

By scott

Charles Arthur in the Guardian had an interesting post on T-Mobile’s decision to impose a 500MB data cap on all smartphone. He picks the odd announcement apart better than I could, including pointing out that it seems to have been written by someone who has no idea how the internet works, or indeed how to make their new ‘plan’ clear ? as they seem to be saying that you can ‘browse’ (by their definition) as much as you like even if you go over the new data cap, but that doing anything that is not ‘browsing’ (by their definition) means that’ll be blocked once you hit 500MB (inc browsing). So, anyone that has a mobile TV sub, may as well stick it straight in the bin.

I’m also presuming all future smart phone ads for T-mobile will only show people looking at static internet pages and nothing else. Better not be showing them watching video or anything like that.

The most interesting thing for me, as a T-Mobile user (and I have not had an email or text from T-Mobile telling me anything yet) is that the announcement says “From 1st February 2011 we will be aligning our fair use policies so our mobile internet service will have fair use of 500MB.”

They can do this, because the terms and conditions that we all have to sign say they can.

Section 7.1.3 of Pay Monthly T&Cs state that, “We can suspend, change or withdraw your Price Plan or price plan services.” Annoying, but clear enough. However it also says ” We will give you written notice one calendar month before we do so.”

This is where the 1st of February date becomes more interesting. Do T-Mobile mean, that they started contacting customers from 1 Jan to tell them about this change, and that the switchover to the new data cap will be gradually introduced based on the dates people were ‘written’ to? I do hope so, otherwise if they plan to change everyone’s data cap on 1st Feb, then they will clearly be in breach of their own contracts T&Cs which clearly require 30 days written notice.

Update

No sooner do I post this, then T-Mobile posts this:

T-Mobile Statement:

?On Monday 10 January 2011 we announced that, in line with the rest of the industry, T-Mobile would be reducing its Fair Use Policy for data usage to 500MB a month for all mobile phone customers. Following a further review of our policy, these changes will now be introduced from 1 February, to new and upgrading customers only - not existing customers.

There will be no change to the data packages for existing customers  for the duration of their contract and we apologise for any confusion caused. The revision to the Fair Use Policy is designed to ensure an improved quality of service for all mobile internet users.”

 Lysa Hardy, VP, T-Mobile UK

Love the ‘Following a further review of our policy’ line. Alos quite like the ‘in line with the rest of the industry’ line too - Guessing ‘3′ who announced they were ditching data limits are not part of the T-Mobile’s industry anymore then?

Full post as published by Information Overload on January 12, 2011 (boomark / email).