T-Mobile has always had a love-hate relationship with HD video streaming. Even if you pay for a plan that includes unlimited HD video streaming, you’re forced to enable an HD video “pass” every 24 hours to actually access the higher-quality streams.
The idea was designed so that people wouldn’t leave HD streaming on by accident and then choke T-Mobile’s network when they didn’t need to. But it turned into a giant pain point for T-Mobile’s customers, some of whom resorted to creating a bot that would spam T-Mobile’s customer service every 24 hours to turn HD streaming back on.
But as of this Friday, that’s all changing. Starting on the 17th, all customers on T-Mobile’s One plan will get unlimited HD video streaming and 10GB of 4G hotspot data included, with no additional charge. Rather than having to keep enabling HD video, customers will have to manually turn it on once through the app or their online account. New customers will have access to HD streaming, but will still have to go into the account to enable it.
A T-Mobile spokesperson confirmed to BGR that once that’s done, HD video streaming will be turned on for life. That brings T-Mobile’s One plan directly in line with Verizon’s new Unlimited plan in terms of features: both plans give unlimited data up to a certain threshold, including unlimited HD video streaming and a 10GB limit on mobile tethering. Both plans come with the caveat that you “may” be throttled at peak times after hitting a certain threshold: 22GB for Verizon, and 28GB for T-Mobile.
Update: Clarification that new customers have access to HD video streaming, but still have to manually enable it in their account.
