T-Mobile to throttle G1 speed after 1GB a month?
The first carrier to launch a phone running Google's Android software appears to be placing limits on just how much data that phone will be able to access on its 3G network.
T-Mobile is warning G1 customers that they could get placed into the slow lane if they use more than 1GB of data in a billing cycle.
Engadget spotted the fine print underneath T-Mobile's G1 page on its Web site trumpeting the arrival of the first phone to run Google's Android software. "If your total data usage in any billing cycle is more than 1GB, your data throughput for the remainder of that cycle may be reduced to 50 kbps or less," the company warned.
Now, that doesn't apply to anything you download or upload over a Wi-Fi connection, and may not be much of an obstacle for some users. But if you're like a few folks inside our office--one of whom has used 187MBs in just the past 24 hours on his iPhone 3G--you're liable to hit that speed bump pretty quick. Downloading almost anything on a 50Kbps connection is going to be extremely frustrating.
T-Mobile might have trouble enforcing this cap, but they appear to be putting it in the contract. It's a confusing move, given the trend among carriers toward all-you-can-eat data plans, but could be a defensive maneuver to protect T-Mobile's young 3G network from being overwhelmed by G1 users.
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