T-Mobile’s got a heavy focus on data usage, touting its network as being “data strong,” offering a Data Stash rollover feature, and even selling unlimited data plans. All of those features probably make T-Mo attractive to heavy data users, but if you consume a lot of data on a T-Mobile unlimited plan, there’s some new fine print with that plan that you should be aware of.
Our pals at TmoNews have discovered that T-Mobile recently added a specific soft cap to its unlimited 4G LTE Simple Choice plans. On both the individual and family plan pages, there’s a footnote that reads as follows:
“*Unlimited 4G LTE customers who use more than 21 GB of data in a bill cycle will have their data usage de-prioritized compared to other customers for that bill cycle at locations and times when competing network demands occur, resulting in relatively slower speeds. See t-mobile.com/OpenInternet for details.”
Previously, T-Mobile would de-prioritize the speeds of customers that used more data than 97 percent of other T-Mo subscribers when they were in a congested area. Now we’ve got a clear cap rather than a vague percentage that could change, so you’ll definitely know if you’re at risk of having your speeds slowed in a congested area.
This more clear soft cap is only going to affect a select group of heavy data users, and even then, it’ll only affect them when they’re in a congested area. Still, it’s good to be aware of it so that the next time that you gobble up 21GB or more of data, you won’t be shocked if you’re in a busy area and your data speeds slow to a crawl.
How much data do you typically use each month?
