There wasn’t much relevant negative attention that came from Tuesday’s T-Mobile event showcasing the official announcement of the HTC G1. One large point of contention however, was the realization that the carrier planned to limit G1 owners’ 3G data throughput to 1 gigabyte per month. The imposed 1 GB limit would be a soft limit and excess data would be slowed or even impeded. No, no, no. Mainstream media, the blogosphere and potential G1 owners alike went right to work on the ridiculous stipulation expressing a great deal of – how can we put it lightly – concern. Well it took less than 24 hours for T-Mobile to respond to the outrage, and respond it did. In an official statement, T-Mobile has announced that the 1 GB soft limit on 3G data is kaput. According to the statement there will still be limits imposed and penalties for excessive usage but they will likely be far more reasonable.
We have a responsibility to provide the best network experience for all of our customers so we reserve the right to temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of our customers who have excessive or disproportionate usage that interferes with our network performance or our ability to provide quality service to all of our customers.
Sure, that can be interpreted a variety of ways but the bottom line is T-Mobile is now under the microscope in terms of how it finalizes G1 data restrictions. It now knows it can’t pull off an unfair cap and the amended terms are expected to be much more reasonable once finalized. Good job people. As T-Mobile continues to roll out its young 3G data network there is absolutely no reason that it should be allowed to skimp on strength and reliability. 1 GB per month? Not a chance.
