T-Mobile’s John Legere always wants to be the good guy, giving customers more data and minutes than the rest of his wireless peers.
But he’s had enough with at least 3,000 of the company’s users, who he’s calling abusers, thieves and hackers for using an excessive amount of data on the Bellevue carrier’s network.
“It’s a small group – 1/100 of a percent of our 59 million customers – but some of them are using as much as 2 terabytes (2,000GB!) of data in a month,” wrote Legere, in a blog post late last night. “I’m not sure what they are doing with it – stealing wireless access for their entire business, powering a small cloud service, providing broadband to a small city, mining for bitcoin — but I really don’t care!”
By blogging, and of course, tweeting about his plans, Legere hopes to gain support for shutting down these violators despite carriers always getting a bad reputation for calling plans unlimited and then revising later what that means.
Customer experience is my top priority & that means eliminating anyone who abuses our network. #byebye http://t.co/VdfpTBIQ3J
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015
But in this case, Legere says these users are blatantly violating the company’s terms of service to the detriment of other customers.
Here’s what’s happening: He says unlimited smartphone 4G LTE plans include 7 GB of usage for tethering at no extra cost (that’s connecting to a PC or tablet to get Internet access). And, if customers hit that high-speed tethering limit, those tethering speeds slow down. If a customer needs more LTE tethering, they can buy more.
But these violators are going out of their way to steal more LTE tethered data, he claims. They are hiding their usage by downloading apps and rooting their phones and writing code to mask their activity. “They are ‘hacking’ the system to swipe high speed tethered data,” he said.
He worries that by coming out against them, they will try to accuse T-Mobile of throttling their data. In fact, it’s already happening on Twitter.
.@The_Real_Dinger spin spin spin. Our plans are all designed with an extra amount of tethering very clearly agreed in terms…
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015
T-Mobile’s solution is not all that high-tech: If you are one of these abusers, plan to hear from T-Mobile today, and expect to be moved from an unlimited plan to a “limited 4G LTE” plan, which will still allow you to use a lot of data but at reduced speeds.
“I’m not in this business to play data cop, but we started this wireless revolution to change the industry for good and to fight for consumers,” he concludes.
Update, 2:05 p.m. PT: Legere hopped back on Twitter Monday afternoon to provide more details about his earlier statements.
1/ We sell an unlimited LTE smartphone plan – no wireless co sells a replacement for wired broadband. #callyourISP
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015
2/ On @TMobile, Unlimited LTE is unlimited…as long as it’s used on your smartphone. Period. Watch Netflix on your phone all day. #legit
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015
3/ Tethering abusers = < 0.01% of our customers
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015
4/ This abuse is intentional. If you’re not sure, YOU ARE NOT an abuser. This isn’t something the average person just happens to do.
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015
5/ We will stop the tethering abusers. The other guys just saddle ALL their customers with caps & overages. #sorrynotsorry
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015
6/ We’re protecting America’s fastest 4G LTE network for the 99.99% of you using it honestly. #uncarrier #caseclosed
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 31, 2015