This week, fair usage policies have come under the spotlight. T-Mobile made a major blunder, and capped its fair usage policy for new, upgrading and existing users. This angered T-Mobile customers, in particular, the ones who were getting their data allowance rolled back mid-contract, some of them by a fair chunk. After a swift backlash, and the realisation it was breaking the law, T-Mobile did a U-turn within two days of the original announcement.
It wasn’t so much a data cap in itself that people were angry with though, it was the network’s management of the change. Because while T-Mobile made a PR blunder, the cap isn’t restrictive to most users. The problem was that T-Mobile had rolled back on existing contracts, and changed the terms part way through.
500MB is plenty for most people. The average smartphone user gets through 200MB per month, and to give you a quantifiable idea, I can tell you that in the last six months I’ve received 1.3GB of data on my iPhone 4 and sent 233MB. I use it constantly for browsing and email, stream music and videos and send images via email a fair bit. (If you want to have a look at what you’ve used on your iPhone 4, click through settings > about > usage, and scroll down to data.)
In contrast, Three has moved in the opposite direction to T-Mobile, and removed all caps from its The One Plan contract. For The One Plan, unlimited means unlimited. Only a very small proportion of its customers were using over the 1GB allowance, but that because users don’t know how much 1GB of data is, they “don’t know how much data they need or even when they’re using it. They’re worried about using the internet on their phone and going over their inclusive allowance.” Their reaction: remove all data caps.
Vodafone has been investing in its network for a number of years to deal with extra data traffic, and its data caps are in place to keep the network in balance and up to speed. It also stopped using the term unlimited last year (as did O2). It also says that only 3% of its customers exceed their data caps, and while 1% go over it spectacularly, that’s only because they’re tethering, then doing things like downloading films.
There’s also a difference in the way networks deal with excessive data use. Vodafone sends you a warning via SMS when you’re near your limit, and charges you £5 per 500MB if you go over. T-Mobile is saying it will not charge, but will restrict its customers activities by cordoning off access to things like downloading and streaming, although how they’ll do this effectively is unclear, as shown this morning on The Guardian.
The data allowance on T-Mobile is not particularly restrictive, and 500MB is what lots of mid range contracts offer as standard. For example, the iPhone 4 on O2 for £30 per month gives you 500MB of data. The difference though, is that other networks have stopped using the misleading term unlimited.
Unlimited has for a long time had a fair usage caveat. But T-Mobile intends to carry on calling its 500MB limit unlimited, when it’s nothing of the sort. The result of the T-Mobile data debacle is a drop in confidence from its customers. Some people left in the two days between the announcement and the rollback, and others mocked up template cancellation letters excusing themselves from fees because T-Mobile had broken the terms of its contract.
T-Mobile made a big mistake: flip flopping shows poor decision making and planning from the network, and nearly breaking the law at the detriment to its customers sparked a lot of anger and mistrust. To also carry on calling its policies unlimited only adds to the problem.
What do you think about the T-Mobile data faff? Shout out in the comments!
