T-Mobile and Sprint both announced today that they were letting go of limits on your data plan; T-Mobile One launches in September, and Sprint’s Unlimited Freedom plan arrives tomorrow. If you get either, you won’t have to worry about data overages. And on the face of it, it’s a good deal. But there are, if you read the fine print, limits to this supposedly unlimited data plan.
The Verge looked over the fine print and discovered that throttling has just moved to certain services. For example, on T-Mobile, your video streams will be limited to 480p, and if you tether your phone to your computer, you’ll be limited to 2G speeds. On Sprint, video is similarly limited and music streams are limited to 500 kbps as well, although that is fairly generous. Needless to say, money will fix these issues, but it’ll cost you an extra $40 a month on T-Mobile, and Sprint doesn’t have an option to boost your plan at all.
That said, while this might be something of a drawback for some people, it’s still a step in the right direction. The mobile industry has been built, too often, on inflating the costs of dealing with your data. Even opening up data plans, right now, is a step forward, although sooner or later, mobile companies will need to ask themselves just how much they can really charge.
(Via The Verge)
