If a corporation is holding back something that is not theirs to offer in the first place, then again, yes, it SHOULD be taken from them.

T-Mobile is charging people not based on how much data they use here, but on what they're using that data for. I'm quite confident this will not be upheld as legal by the FCC. And if that's the case, tethering is not something T-Mobile (or any carrier) has a right to either give OR take.

T-Mobile only made tethering an issue because it's the only contractually legitimate reason they have left for going after heavy data users, who make no mistake are the real target here. They can deprioritize you, but they can't mess with your contract if you're using heavy data 'legitimately'. But if you're tethering, they can nail you for anything over 7BG, and then charge you for more.

So the better analogy would be a Chinese buffet where you can eat all you want with chopsticks, but only a 1/4 pound of it with a fork. Because much like how people can consume more data faster by tethering, people can eat more food faster with a fork, regardless of how true either of those statements actually are. Luckily you have the option to pay for more fork use, but most people just try to sneak in with their own utensils instead, so the restaurant also has a metal detector.

Thanks. Now I'm hungry.

Want to know what one of those third party packages is? CyanogenMod. So yeah, damn those 'thieves' for installing a more secure and stable version of Android on their devices and freeing themselves of T-Mobile and OEM bloatware.

Tethering detection is also unreliable and error prone. You can be flagged for tethering just for changing your user agent to access 'desktop' websites.

The only reason to have tethering restrictions is to sell you more services through the phone. Data is data, and 2tb of legitimate use will be just as disruptive to the network as 2tb of tethered use. And as I've said before, I don't believe these kind of restrictions on internet bandwidth are legally enforceable in the U.S., though it make take a case to set a precedent.

So who 'owns' the radio spectrum, and by what justification do they claim ownership? Should I not have a right to the spectrum surrounding my property? And if so, does that not give unconscionable power to the people who own the most physical property?

Well then, why hasn't T-Mobile simply cancelled the offender's service, especially if it's interfering with the service of their other users? After all, if the user is violating the agreement, then T-Mobile is well within its rights to cancel the contract.

Instead, I see a lot of talk about 'thieves' and 'rooting', which makes me wonder.

Yes. Especially if corporations are marketing that bandwidth in ways which will conflict with federal regulation. And I'm confident the FCC will rule that you cannot charge for the same bandwidth multiple times for different uses. That's why if you sue T-Mobile on that basis they'll back down as opposed to risk a precedent or any case which might move to the supreme court.

Oh, and if it's not available, it should not be offered by T-Mobile in the first place. But that's not what you mean, is it? You mean you shouldn't try to get anything that isn't spoon fed to you by the corporations, right? In which case thank you, because sheep like you are how I will be making my money.

That condition (class action waiver, typically accompanied by a binding arbitration clause) is typically part of the warranty contract, which means if they cannot show you that contract before you purchase the device/service, it's unenforceable in the U.S. And if they can, you can opt-out by simply writing so on the contract.

Now they'll tell you that you need to call some number or fill out some internet form to opt-out, but that's bullshit, because opting out does not require you to use their means to do so. But if you do, it also means not all the conditions you agreed to are on the written contract, so it's up to them to prove you didn't opt-out.

If you have a problem with T-Mobile, take them to small claims. It costs $15 to file in NY for claims at or below $1500. If more people did this T-Mobile would notice.

Actually it's necessary.

The only way to absolutely guarantee a specific amount of bandwidth to a customer is to make sure no one else is using it when they need it. And the only way to do that is to either let it sit idle while that customer is not using it, or throttle other customers who are. But you can't do the latter if you guaranteed those other customers a specific amount of bandwidth too. The whole situation is just not financially feasible for either the carrier OR their customers. And much like a bank would die if everybody decided to withdraw their money at the same time, so would a network die if everybody decided to use it at its maximum capacity at the same time.

The problem is carriers deliberately told the customer that their service was unlimited where it wasn't. Throttling policies are necessary, and should be detailed in the contract in no uncertain terms. Instead, carrier and cable companies would rather keep their throttling policies ambiguous for some reason.

Carriers are trying to maximize their profits by selling you the exact same bandwidth for different uses, which may not even be enforceable in the United States. So it's gonna be real interesting to see how the FCC rules on this.

Everybody has a different idea of what these 'fair' limits are, which is why we use written contracts to establish what those expectations are clearly before any agreement is made. And since unlimited data is a physical impossibility, T-Mobile, and all other carriers who make such claims, are lying about what they can offer. That's what we call FRAUD here in the United States, though I'm pretty sure other countries have similar laws.

All the buffets I know of advertise all you can EAT, and you don't need to sign anything (unless you pay by check or credit) because you agree to that contract once you pay and start eating. Stuffing food in your pockets is therefore a violation of that contract. Using T-Mobile's unlimited data on the other hand is NOT a violation of contract, because each party has a different idea of what is fair and reasonable which was not clearly established in the written contract. So your analogy doesn't hold.

Some of the most customer hostile companies I've ever encountered are accredited by the BBB and have incredibly high ratings there. Not T-Mobile (C+) though. They were rated F in 2013, and aren't accredited like Verizon (A) and AT&T (A+).

The FTC has also gone after them as recently as 2014 for adding services customers (including myself) didn't order or need.

And yet they remain in business.

A subscriber agreement IS a contract (despite what cable/carrier companies want you to believe), and adding terms to a contract is exactly what you can do. So if T-Mobile sold you a device and provided service after those changes were made, it can be argued they implicitly agreed to the modified contract. These agreements are signed by providing the service, much like EULAs are signed by using the software

The problem is this clause is ambiguous. T-Mobile could still provide data at any speed or bandwidth they decide. After all, it didn't say unlimited bandwidth. And if data IS referring to bandwidth, then it's a physically impossible condition that T-Mobile could be held liable for making claims about.

'contract', 'unlimited', these words refer to specific well defined things. Don't let carriers define them for you.

Despite the excellence of their hardware, Samsung software is so bad it actually adds negative value to their products. Their unnecessary modifications to Android increase their support and engineering costs and decrease the performance, security, and reliability of their devices. And their corporate culture is so inimical to software engineering that they will never be able to produce a software stack that's worth anything. No doubt in my mind. Too many Samsung developers have the same stories to just write those situations off as isolated incidents.

So given that's the case, what's to be gained by moving to Tizen, an OS which Samsung isn't even willing to install on their flagship devices? Performance? Security? Battery Life? Ease of Programming? Business Opportunities? Developer Support? At least Samsung gets to avoid the Android patents fees, but how does it benefit customers and developers?

Indeed, which is why you need to consider a corporation's priorities (and perhaps read my other post here) before you get in bed with them. Google's priority is ads, and any issue which does not provably and directly affect that will have little to no thought or resources invested in it. Again, look at the services Google has dropped, and the ones they've kept.

As they say in America: Show me the money, because we're discussing Android's financial success here, not its ubiquity. The value of a platform is not in how many people have access to it, but in how many people are willing to invest their time and money in it.

Of course China is a special case. A very LARGE special case full of money :)

Actually, China is the one who took their ball and went home, blocking Google services and trying to establish their own software ecosystem.

Dominates what exactly?

Base market share? Sure, but who cares? And even then the market is subdivided between the different versions of Android, then the modifications made by the manufacturers, then the modifications made by the carriers. And I can assure you that not even most of them are reliably compatible with each other.

But profitability, stability, or even usability? Not by a long shot.

I have no particular love of Apple. I think the political and technical restrictions they put on their devices are bulls***, and may even be illegal. And they've been screwing the pooch on software quality since iOS7 and Mavericks, to the point it may actually be worse than Android now. But they had their s*** together at one point.

Android never did. It never had a unified vision of what it should be. The developers never considered audio latency and rendering speed to be a priority. The tools were so bad that people succeeded in making apps despite them. The situation has gotten better, but that's largely because it couldn't get any worse.

I've had three Android phones. Not one of them worked reliably, and the third broke mission critical software on an update. I couldn't care less about platform popularity. If I can't reliably use my apps, it doesn't matter how popular or cheap a device is. And honestly if people prioritized the former over the latter, we might not be in the crappy software situation we're in now.

Then unless they want to stick with Apple, they should return the device and ask for a refund, and if refused take Apple to Small Claims.

Small Claims is a simple, effective, and fair way to hold a vendor accountable, and a software update which renders your device unreliable IS their responsibility. Seriously, more people need to start doing this, because the current state of affairs has vendors arbitrarily doing s*** like this because they aren't being held accountable.

Indeed. Their priorities color everything, and I would carefully consider them before forming any contractual obligations.

Except for Microsoft, whose priorities I can no longer explain. They used to prioritize developers and user experience, and so our interests aligned, but something happened after Windows 7. Now they remove features and make breaking changes in their software platforms almost yearly, and run the most developer hostile app store I've ever encountered. They managed to make an excellent tablet UI, only to frack up the desktop with it, and now they're doing the same thing in reverse and fracking up the tablet UI with more desktop like features.

These days the only platforms which prioritize developers are multi-platform frameworks like Unity, which is why I stick with them. This also highlights just how unaligned vendor interests are with developers, as we wouldn't even need things like Unity if platform vendors were more open to porting, but they're only interested in the value developers can add to their platform.