My T-Mobile honeymoon has long since passed, with the day-to-day reality of life on a second-rate carrier having set in. Of course, your mileage may vary as cell coverage is highly dependent upon locale (or building composition). For me, T-Mobile has provided an extremely frustrating experience with perhaps, ironically, superior coverage roaming overseas partners versus native networks here at home — with the majority of my calls dropping. On the occasions I have coverage to initiate one.
My latest Uncarrier lesson, where marketing hype once again doesn’t square with my experience, comes via a tethering/hotspot cap I clearly wasn’t aware of. In T-Mobile’s favor, they are extremely generous in the pricing and quantity of data they provide compared to AT&T and Verizon. And, at those times when I’ve had LTE coverage, I’ve appreciated the seemingly unlimited 4G firehose via both smartphone and laptop. However, whereas I was once told I’d never be cut off, only throttled, there is some magic number where tethering/hotspot service is suspended… as you can see above. Officially, my plan indicates 3GB of hotspot data. Yet, having consumed over 9GB of combined phone/tethered data thus far this month, there is a generous but misleading line in the sand somewhere and knowing is half the battle. So now you know.
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A few notes... I've used way more data these last few weeks than I would in a typical month due to working out of a different office 1 day a week, where WiFi is barely usable and I have fairly good T-Mobile coverage (versus my normal office, where there's little to no T-Mo). A nearly 2GB Apple software download that I probably can't tell you about is what pushed me over the top. Also, as far as usage in general goes, I try to stay off public WiFi and tether when conditions permit - it's a more secure solution.
"where marketing hype once again doesn’t square with my experience"
Your experience is obviously incorrect. Marketing hype is canonical.
I gave up on T-Mobile last month and coughed up money to join the death star. I tried very hard for 7 years to deal with coverage, 1700 mhz battery drain and call quality issues. The fix would be repairing cells on unloved towers and having their rf engineers tune the 1700 MHz signal for a mix of speed and quality and not speed alone where it gets really attenuated.
I've never gotten the death cutoff message when tethering too much. But ive been using android phones that don't report hotspot usage. Only my friendly iPhone shares that data with carriers.