Looking into this a little, I don't understand it at all.
The plans already include unlimited data. They say "no overages. Ever."
They do have one limit, which is 1GB on LTE (per month, I assume). After that, your speeds are reduced to 3G.
What makes this hard to understand is that 3G is perfectly adequate for music streaming. You really only need about 100kbps to stream high-quality music, and even half-assed 3G is adequate for that. Hell, I've managed to stream music over EDGE before, with the only problem being the injection of lots of annoying GSM buzz into my stereo system.
So I guess what it comes down to is, they're making it so that a certain class of slow-and-steady LTE usage, which doesn't need anything close to LTE speeds, will no longer affect your ability to get LTE speeds when you actually need it. Or something like that. Which is nice, but nowhere near the big deal they make it out to be.
It's a huge deal. I use iTunes Radio and similar when I'm driving to listen to music. I get 5GB per month of LTE-speed, after which they crank me down to sad-town speeds.
Previously, on months where I drove more often, I hit the cap. This means I'll not have to care about keeping an eye on my usage.
You're correct about the actual change they made: letting me do something that's comparatively low-bandwidth without it counting against my high-bandwidth concerns. But for me at least, you've underestimated the benefit: I'm unlikely to need to look at my usage again or do math to decide if it's time to stop streaming. I'll just rock on.
Could you not just turn off LTE while streaming music and get most of the same benefit? Or do they give you 1GB of all traffic, after which you get throttled?
OK, now it all makes good sense. From reading T-Mobile's info, I came away thinking it was 1GB on actual LTE, with non-LTE not counting at all. Thanks for explaining.
Actually they bump you down to EDGE if you go over your quota. It's a pretty noticeable difference. Heckuva lot better than charging you some crazy amount per MB in overages though.
The plans already include unlimited data. They say "no overages. Ever."
They do have one limit, which is 1GB on LTE (per month, I assume). After that, your speeds are reduced to 3G.
What makes this hard to understand is that 3G is perfectly adequate for music streaming. You really only need about 100kbps to stream high-quality music, and even half-assed 3G is adequate for that. Hell, I've managed to stream music over EDGE before, with the only problem being the injection of lots of annoying GSM buzz into my stereo system.
So I guess what it comes down to is, they're making it so that a certain class of slow-and-steady LTE usage, which doesn't need anything close to LTE speeds, will no longer affect your ability to get LTE speeds when you actually need it. Or something like that. Which is nice, but nowhere near the big deal they make it out to be.