T-Mobile appears to have quietly made a change to the fine print of its unlimited 4G LTE Simple Choice Plans, the change is evident in the fine print for both family plans and individual plans. The carrier has basically added a 21GB “soft cap” on these accounts which means that if 21GB of data is used in a billing cycle users will have their data usage de-prioritized.
What does that mean? T-Mobile’s explanation of data usage de-prioritization is that users who have consumed 21GB of data in a bill cycle will see their speeds being reduced in areas where the network is congested.
It doesn’t entail full time throttling of users, only in locations where the network is congested will T-Mobile de-priortize data usage of those users who have consumed more than 21GB of data on their unlimited 4G LTE Simple Choice Plans within one bill cycle.
Since this depends upon locations where network is congested most users might not find any change in their data speeds if they’re not in a location where there might be some congestion on the network.
Previously T-Mobile only applied this to those who used more data than 97% of its customers and that was ambiguous to say the last, the 21GB soft cap at least puts a concrete figure on it.
It’s a soft cap which means that once the bill cycle is over the cap will automatically be removed and users will have that 21GB buffer again in which their speeds won’t be lowered even if there’s congestion on the network.
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