T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

[irev210]

I think this is the strategy to eliminate unlimited users. If Tmo kills it as an option, they are the bad guys. Instead, they slowly raise the price so that it is less appealing to new customers. As they add more "freedom" and "binge" options current $80 unlimited customers see less need for unlimited and drop to cheaper plans to save a buck or two. Eventually unlimited reaches a price point where it is just plain stupid and Tmo kills it due to lack of subscribers choosing it. You slowly reach the point where your grandfathered unlimited customers are a very small percentage of subscribers. At that point you pull away benefits (freedom and binge) from unlimited and then they can't stay under the 23GB cap and are encouraged to select one of the other throttled plans that include freedom and binge so that they can continue to use the network like they did previously.

 

Sent from my SM-T237P using Tapatalk

 

My two cents:

 

T-Mobile wants to keep unlimited economic for the business and wants to offer customers choice.  I think it is pretty simple that subscribers willing to pay for a premium service (unlimited) should be hit with a premium price point.  The idea is to move everyone else that is looking for a better value for their usage patterns onto a tiered data plan and remove pain points typically associated with a tiered data plan (ie - if you stream video a tiered data plan simply doesn't work).

 

This kills two birds with one stone.  It allows premium power users who demand unlimited data to be priced accordingly.  Those that just like the idea of unlimited data because they want to watch video or listen to music are able to move to less expensive tiered plans with those services "well managed" and not overtly a burden on T-Mob's network.

 

Often times I think people look to emotion (being "bad guys" etc) to answer simple business decisions.  This is all about capturing the appropriate amount of revenue for those that need/want unlimited while allowing those that don't other options that satisfy their usage patterns.

 

The end goal here is simple:  Max revenues with the lowest churn.  T-Mobile is well-run, I suspect they'll continue to adjust the price of unlimited at a price point that makes sense for customers demanding the service and T-Mobile.  I mean, just think about it for a second... priced at $5/GB (very profitable), a $95/month customer is essentially paying for 19GB of data.  Round it to an even 20 and we see why the magical 23GB mark exists.  T-Mobile will not give away services and will not subsidize unlimited customers with standard limited customers.

[S4GRU]

My two cents:

 

T-Mobile wants to keep unlimited economic for the business and wants to offer customers choice. I think it is pretty simple that subscribers willing to pay for a premium service (unlimited) should be hit with a premium price point. The idea is to move everyone else that is looking for a better value for their usage patterns onto a tiered data plan and remove pain points typically associated with a tiered data plan (ie - if you stream video a tiered data plan simply doesn't work).

 

This kills two birds with one stone. It allows premium power users who demand unlimited data to be priced accordingly. Those that just like the idea of unlimited data because they want to watch video or listen to music are able to move to less expensive tiered plans with those services "well managed" and not overtly a burden on T-Mob's network.

 

Often times I think people look to emotion (being "bad guys" etc) to answer simple business decisions. This is all about capturing the appropriate amount of revenue for those that need/want unlimited while allowing those that don't other options that satisfy their usage patterns.

 

The end goal here is simple: Max revenues with the lowest churn. T-Mobile is well-run, I suspect they'll continue to adjust the price of unlimited at a price point that makes sense for customers demanding the service and T-Mobile. I mean, just think about it for a second... priced at $5/GB (very profitable), a $95/month customer is essentially paying for 19GB of data. Round it to an even 20 and we see why the magical 23GB mark exists. T-Mobile will not give away services and will not subsidize unlimited customers with standard limited customers.

He had no emotion and didn't make them out as bad guys, per se. He basically said the same thing as you. Yours was just lined with financial analysis, which you tend to do well.

 

T-Mobile is trying to make it more attractive for people to get off unlimited, and they are going to capitalize on the remaining. It's fair, but it's what they're doing. We've been saying unlimited will get more and more expensive, so there is no surprises, really.

 

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

[WiWavelength]

Idk if this was addressed with the family plans. Will there be a option to have a line that is truly unlimited? So if I have three lines and I want one with no data wall what would be the charge for that line? The individual unlimited is going to be $95

 

If on Family Match, all lines must have the same data allotments.

 

 

AJ

[MacinJosh]

Was there no cap before? I honestly never thought about if data stash had a cap or not, just knew it had a 12 month expiration. Talk about sneaky sleazeballs. May as well name uncarrier "re-carrier" now. Next uncarrier will probably be a pitch about how sending out a vacuum to suck your pockets and savings accounts dry is the best thing since sliced bread and how you couldn't live without it.

Just like Cingular and Rollover minutes. Wow, what a totally Carrier move. First Rollover was unlimited, then they put a cap on it. Legere is running without a rudder. Soon this ship could crash. Un-carrier 11 will bring back all the Carrier stuff we hated about traditional wireless carriers, if Legere gets that far.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

[Ascertion]

Just like Cingular and Rollover minutes. Wow, what a totally Carrier move. First Rollover was unlimited, then they put a cap on it. Legere is running without a rudder. Soon this ship could crash. Un-carrier 11 will bring back all the Carrier stuff we hated about traditional wireless carriers, if Legere gets that far.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

He'll mask it so it'll look appealing to the masses.  He's at least good with deceit.

[MacinJosh]

He'll mask it so it'll look appealing to the masses. He's at least good with deceit.

And that's when the Tech blogs will figure it out and everything about T-Mobile will go to hell.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

[NYC126]

Wasn't a little troll at fiercewireless that always advocate for lower wireless prices while his God John Legere is raising prices by 15 dollars.

 

I hope the magentans realize that Tmobile doesn't have the spectrum capacity to offer unlimited data and keep adding a million of customers every quarter. In the other hand they are doing this for profit and to kick out the trolls that use their lines as home ISPs.

[Ascertion]

Wasn't a little troll at fiercewireless that always advocate for lower wireless prices while his God John Legere is raising prices by 15 dollars.

 

I hope the magentans realize that Tmobile doesn't have the spectrum capacity to offer unlimited data and keep adding a million of customers every quarter. In the other hand they are doing this for profit and to kick out the trolls that use their lines as home ISPs.

Actually, the little troll hasn't posted anything to FierceWireless in awhile now.  I think Jalan94 scared him off.

[NYC126]

Actually, the little troll hasn't posted anything to FierceWireless in awhile now.  I think Jalan94 scared him off.

 

He is at Howardforums.com

[WiWavelength]

Actually, the little troll hasn't posted anything to FierceWireless in awhile now.  I think Jalan94 scared him off.

 

Which T-Mobile troll is this?  And was there an incident at FierceWireless that prompted a move to HowardForums?

 

AJ

[Ascertion]

Which T-Mobile troll is this?  And was there an incident at FierceWireless that prompted a move to HowardForums?

 

AJ

Cabian Fortez.

I haven't seen a post by him on Fierce in over a week now.  He's still active on Tmonews so I know he's still using Disqus.  Supposedly a number of people kept pointing out his biased views and he got tired of it.

[NYC126]

He is in the howardforums.com, and Sprint board. He even posted sprint quarter numbers. Of course after posting sprint numbers he start bashing them.

 

This show you howardforums.com is a crap place for wireless enthusiastics.

[NYC126]

I didn't realize John Legere was in the movie hackers.

[cortney]

Cabian Fortez.

I haven't seen a post by him on Fierce in over a week now.  He's still active on Tmonews so I know he's still using Disqus.  Supposedly a number of people kept pointing out his biased views and he got tired of it.

 

2 weeks ago. And by he I'm thinking someone at FW. 30 days of its posts were removed, so someone at FW got pissed or fed up. That looks like a ban. (Look at the comments on articles from ~October to verify). 

 

This show you howardforums.com is a crap place for wireless enthusiastics.

 

It's obviously not moderated much if any. Even worse, it's like a dodgeball match when it gets heated and they do nothing (unless I'm wrong but I rarely ever visit HF). 

 

Anyone know some brief history on that site? 

[bretton88]

2 weeks ago. And by he I'm thinking someone at FW. 30 days of its posts were removed, so someone at FW got pissed or fed up. That looks like a ban. (Look at the comments on articles from ~October to verify).

 

 

It's obviously not moderated much if any. Even worse, it's like a dodgeball match when it gets heated and they do nothing (unless I'm wrong but I rarely ever visit HF).

 

Anyone know some brief history on that site?

I notice he showed up again on T4GRU yesterday.

[Ascertion]

2 weeks ago. And by he I'm thinking someone at FW. 30 days of its posts were removed, so someone at FW got pissed or fed up. That looks like a ban. (Look at the comments on articles from ~October to verify).

 

 

It's obviously not moderated much if any. Even worse, it's like a dodgeball match when it gets heated and they do nothing (unless I'm wrong but I rarely ever visit HF).

 

Anyone know some brief history on that site?

Getting banned from Fierce is actually quite impressive.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5X

[WiWavelength]

Anyone know some brief history on that site? 

 

Brief history on HowardForums?

 

It would not be that brief.

 

AJ

[richy]

I'm not arbitrarily picking numbers. Here is the situation :

 

Most high-end devices are at least 1080p by now, which needs 3mbps, at least, though is often recommended to be at 5mbps, or even 6mbps. Many times in the past, including recently, I have made the suggestion of having 3mbps for unlimited audio/video.

 

However, considering AJ's post about how this is a form of disability discrimination, something I'm very surprised and quite directly, angered at myself for not considering, especially because I myself am severely physically disabled, I can no longer support the idea of having certain content be unlimited, while other content is not.

 

So, its now either unlimited everything or unlimited nothing. However, as I mentioned earlier, carriers are looking for ways to promote their audio/video content and those providers who partner with them. In order to successfully do this, they need to make the access to this content be unlimited. Customers just are not going to use their paid for data for certain content, only the content that is important to them. In order to introduce those customers to new content though, they need to be enticed and not have to pay for something they are unsure of whether or not they will like that new content.

 

In avoiding discrimination, carriers could make all content unlimited, but then they'd lose money and jam their networks. Yet, if they were to choose a speed cap that would work well enough at 3mbps for all of this, even though I personally agree that is an acceptable speed for all usage, most customers would complain about it being too low in contrast with their home connections and what they currently are getting in speed.

 

Already, Cricket offers their speed cap at around 8mbps. The major carriers would want a higher speed cap than that, if they were legally forced not to discriminate content types, if these carriers still wanted unlimited to promote the content I mentioned. Plus, since Cricket is a prepaid wing of AT&T, they'd need to sell something better.

 

In thinking of what that could be, based on all the circumstances I mentioned, 15mbps is a good compromise. Not an arbitrary figure. I put alot of thought into this. If I didn't, I'd be writing stuff on here like "The cap should be at 100 something mbps mannn, because its like, wayyy cooolll and fast, and include free Netflix and Hulu, and even the adult stuff, Yeah, that would like totally rock DUDE!!!"

 

The reasons I asked are basically because you had posted a few different numbers (my apologies if it came across as confrontational, it wasn't intended) and also because a 15mbps wouldn't really achieve a change in network load but would introduce a differentiator between tmo and say verizon, something big red can throw at them in commercials.

 

The objective of bingeon was to reduce network load whilst hopefully scoring a PR win, appearing to offer more for free while not leaving an avenue open for competitors to slam them (which a rate limit would). What they managed to do, which is quite clever, is to rate limit video streams without providing a single number that could be used again them, genius, evil genius but still pretty damn smart. They have been deliberately vague, there is no specific mbps cap, no actual resolution cap either, it says it won't drop below 480p, but may stream above that. Most likely it won't be above 480p unless there is plenty of spare capacity on a cell. I'll give it to them, they managed to cap streams without providing much ammunition to competitors. Evil, but bloody well played!

 

Capping an individual phone at 15mbps wouldn't actually change any usage. It would mean a file download takes longer but doesn't reduce the amount downloaded. Bingeon actually lowers the rate of a stream which reduces the total amount of data downloaded. 15mbps is pretty high, enough for 4k easily, especially with h265. H264 wouldn't be very good 4k but a decent encoder would reduce artifacts at the expense of detail which you wouldnt notice anyway on a 6 inch 4k screen. 720p is pretty much the most you would need on any screen, no matter what the resolution, below 8 inches and thats coming from a photo and video nut who loves shiny toys. A 15mbps limit would hurt tmobile image wise without providing any upside. Any limit would need to be low enough to impact usage, say 2mbps which would not play well on TV.

 

On digging deeper into how this works there is one big danger, not so much NN but codec neutrality. Notice how google services arent included, youtube etc, this is partially due to how the stream tagging works but also because of the codecs they use. It MAY be that tmobile want and need h264 and h265 (which are commercially licenced) whereas google also uses their free vp8/9 codecs as well. We really do not want to see the world pushed onto one type of commercial codec, no matter how good it is.

[Arysyn]

No offense taken, richy.

 

There is alot of information online I have read, regarding various mbps needed for certain resolution. The most prominent and consistent I've seen though, is 3mbps for 1080p, 15mbps for 4k, at minimum single-user speeds for home use. I couldn't really find anything online specific to cellular/wireless use. I know with new codecs and video technologies those numbers will vary.

 

Also, while 4k still isn't practical for wireless, it is something I wanted to mention inclusive to what T-Mobile could have done if they wanted to be future proof with these plans and really wanted to be mega Uncarrier. The least they could have done is settled on the common resolution standard of 1080p viewing, which whether it is 3mbps or somewhere around that, should work fine on their "data strong" network.

 

I agree with those who are saying these actions are becoming more carrier-like. I've never trusted John Legere and have seen through everything he's done to T-Mobile as deceptive. He's made the company worse taking it away from the company that was known for great price and value for individual lines. Forcing individual lines into watching 480p video just to avoid paying more, is unfair and unnecessary. Plus, then there are the net neutrality and other content fairness issues of this.

[GoBigRed79]

2 weeks ago. And by he I'm thinking someone at FW. 30 days of its posts were removed, so someone at FW got pissed or fed up. That looks like a ban. (Look at the comments on articles from ~October to verify). 

 

 

It's obviously not moderated much if any. Even worse, it's like a dodgeball match when it gets heated and they do nothing (unless I'm wrong but I rarely ever visit HF). 

 

Anyone know some brief history on that site? 

 

HowardForums in the early to mid 2000's was a fairly good wireless forum with some great posters.  It was also fairly well moderated.  The last few years though the moderation got lax and the trolls took over, driving away any posters of substance they had.  As with any forum, go lax on the moderation and let the trolls rule, it will go to s**t in a hurry.  And once you lose your good posters, they usually never come back.  The same thing happened to SprintUsers. 

 

That is why I enjoy S4GRU so much. Zero tolerance for trolls and discussion that is not constructive. 

[cortney]

HowardForums in the early to mid 2000's was a fairly good wireless forum with some great posters.  It was also fairly well moderated.  The last few years though the moderation got lax and the trolls took over, driving away any posters of substance they had.  As with any forum, go lax on the moderation and let the trolls rule, it will go to s**t in a hurry.  And once you lose your good posters, they usually never come back.  The same thing happened to SprintUsers. 

 

That is why I enjoy S4GRU so much. Zero tolerance for trolls and discussion that is not constructive. 

 

Thanks. That's what I was asking for and I kind of presumed. 

 

I also agree this site is a testament to why good moderation and staff is key. Sites rot really quickly without it like you said. 

[Arysyn]

I remember back around the mid 2000s when HowardForums was a really good site. The Sprint Sero plan was a really big deal on there and alot of posters it brought to the Sprint part of the site. While I haven't kept up with the site much since then, when I do visit, it really does seem weak compared to back then.

[NYC126]

Please if this site wasn't kept in check Cabian Cortez and his magentan gang would had destroyed it.

 

Of course a few of them are in T4gru like Doug, Cabian and others.

[gusherb]

I remember back around the mid 2000s when HowardForums was a really good site. The Sprint Sero plan was a really big deal on there and alot of posters it brought to the Sprint part of the site. While I haven't kept up with the site much since then, when I do visit, it really does seem weak compared to back then.

The T-Mobile forum is the busiest these days, and IMO it's full of trolls and people asking mind numbing questions. Not a whole lot of interesting stuff posted. The AT&T and Verizon forums I don't think have really changed much in the last 4 years that I've been over there, not a whole lot of interesting stuff posted there. And the sprint forum I never even look at, its always dead. All the good Sprint discussion is over here ????.

[ericdabbs]

2 weeks ago. And by he I'm thinking someone at FW. 30 days of its posts were removed, so someone at FW got pissed or fed up. That looks like a ban. (Look at the comments on articles from ~October to verify). 

 

I have zero pity for him.  He deserved to get banned and to be honest I am surprised it took so long for FW to realize this.