14 DAY TRIAL // Soon after the release of Google's Android Phone, T-Mobile announced that subscribers would be able to have unlimited data transfer for just $35 per month. This was on Tuesday, September 23. However, a later post on the official website said that users would be limited to only 1GB of data usage per month, after which the connection would be slowed down to only 50KB or less. On Thursday, T-Mobile said that the data limit policy had been removed, yet failed to mention if users would still have unlimited downloads.
"Our goal, when the T-Mobile G1 becomes available in October, is to provide affordable, high-speed data service allowing customers to experience the full data capabilities of the device and our 3G network," said the company. "At the same time, we have a responsibility to provide the best network experience for all of our customers so we reserve the right to temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of our customers who have excessive or disproportionate usage that interferes with our network performance or our ability to provide quality service to all of our customers."
It is understandable that T-Mobile wants to offer each customer a steady download/upload speed, but G1 users were really hoping that they would be able to take full advantage of the applications pre-installed on the device, like GoogleMaps with Street View or YouTube. It is true that these applications tend to use a lot of bandwidth, but they do come as a trademark of the phone and being unable to use them limitlessly is quite a drag.
What T-Mobile will announce next is anybody's guess. The most reasonable thing would be, since it seems it doesn’t have that much bandwidth available, to charge for extra traffic without limiting the speed. Of course, the best thing for all would still be unlimited transfer for only $35.