Heads up, T-Mobile customers, because your carrier today rolled out a policy change that you should be aware of.
T-Mobile confirmed today that it’s raised the deprioritization threshold of its network management policy. Previously, the threshold was 28GB, but today it was raised to 30GB. T-Mo says that this threshold represents the top three percent of data users on its network.
What this deprioritzation threshold means is that once you’ve used 30GB of data in a single month, your data usage will be prioritized below T-Mobile customers that haven’t used that much data. These heavier data users may experience slower data speeds when they’re connected to a congested cell tower. This will last as long as the heavy user is connected to the congested tower or the congestion subsides. The usage will be reset at the start of the next billing cycle.
Now that all four major US carriers offer unlimited data plans, they also have deprioritization thresholds. Sprint’s threshold is at 23GB, while AT&T and Verizon both sit at 22GB.