T-Mobile has generously offered mobile data across borders from 2015 under its “Mobile Without Borders” offer, wherein the U.S. customers could avail texting, calling and 4G LTE data in Canada and Mexico at no extra cost. However, the company is in no mood now to offer unlimited data to their customers, and has decided to cap the monthly limit to 5GB on LTE data.
Explaining its decision, T-Mobile says the limit is put to curb the usage beyond the intent of the product. After 5GB is consumed, the speed will slow down to 128 kbps. T-Mobile also noted that less than 1% of the customers opt for Mobile Without Borders, who travel to Canada and Mexico. Further, out of this, less than 1% of customers use over 5GB data per month. So, very few would be affected by the change.
Those who are without an unlimited plan will get less data. Also, the capped plan users would not be able to use the leftover data in Canada or Mexico, but it will be carried forward. Subscribers, however, need to pay $25 for getting unlimited LTE by subscribing to T-Mobile’s ONE Plus International. The change comes into effect on November 12, 2017.
T-Mobile subscribers on ONE Plus, Simple Choice and Legacy plans will be affected by the change of plans. “If you are on a Legacy plan with a high-speed data maximum (i.e. 4GB, 6GB, 10GB), your data allowance is shared across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, but you only have up to 5GB high-speed data in Mexico and Canada combined,” the company said in a blog post.
Those on the 10GB unlimited data plan and have already exhausted their 2GB in the United States before crossing the border will have a limit of only 5GB in Mexico and Canada combined. Once the 5GB limit is exhausted, a customer can still enjoy the unlimited data at the speed of 128 kbps for most plans, or 256 kbps with T-Mobile ONE Plus. The balance of 3GB can be used once the customer returns to the United States.
“You will now not be able to use your Data Stash in Canada and Mexico. However, you will still be able to accrue Data Stash data while in Canada and Mexico,” the company said.
Separately, T-Mobile has been at odds with the other network carriers lately after claiming that its 4G LTE network is the fastest. However, a few days back, the company agreed not to advertise itself as faster than Verizon, who filed a complaint with the advertising industry’s self-regulation body and won the argument after which T-Mobile had to back out from the claim.
According to the National Advertising Division, T-Mobile cannot claim a faster or newer LTE network. T-Mobile made the claims in print and online ads based on the crowdsourced speed test data from Ookla and OpenSignal.
NAD’s decision, however, has not dampened the spirit of the United States carrier, who is seeking permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to test new LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) mobile equipment on multiple spectrum bands in Texas and Georgia – El Paso and Augusta. T-Mobile’s aggressive testing is part of its greater plan to deploy 5G network nationwide by 2020.
