T-Mobile has agreed to offer customers a more accurate reading of their data speeds throughout each billng cycle.
Earlier this year, T-Mobile exempted certain speed tests from counting against customers’ data limits. In other words, customers aren’t charged for running most speed tests. As part of its usage policy, T-Mobile throttles the speeds of customers who exceed their monthly data allotment (often down to 128Kbps).
The problem, according to the FCC, is that speed test data (even that taken after customers were throttled) most often reflected the absolute speeds available from the network, not the real-world speeds available to individual customers based on their billing status. As a result, customers who had been throttled would obtain speed test results that far exceeded their actual available speeds, which led to confusion.
Moving forward, customers who’ve had their speeds reduced for ovestepping their data will see an accurate reflection of the speeds available to them. Further, T-Mobile agreed to notify customers via SMS when they’ve reached their data limit, as well as supply customers with a link to provide accurate speed tests. T-Mobile also agreed to make these policies easier to understand on its web site. T-Mobile said it will enact these policies within 60 days.
