T-Mobile free music streaming and data sense

[MBY]

As has been reported on WPC, T-Mobile in the US just announced that some of the most popular music streaming services will no longer count towards your data limit. I'm a T-Mobile customer with the base data plan so this is great for me.

I'm confused how this is meant to work with Data Sense, though. Data Sense always reports very low data usage for streaming applications like Pandora and MetroTube and just groups the large amount of data you're actually using under "Streaming Media". As far as T-Mo and the free-data apps, I can see this going two ways:

1. WP8 identifies all streaming media under one name. T-Mobile won't be able to tell which app is using the data and this perk won't help WP8 users.

• WP8 separates streaming media by app, but Data Sense doesn't. T-Mobile will be able to tell which app is using the data, but Data Sense becomes unreliable as far as your limit goes.

Obviously I prefer #2! It would be even better if Data Sense could get an update to differentiate free vs. not free data (though I don't know how they could do this).

 

[metalchick719]

You're concerned about how much data will be calculated when streaming music, right? You can always do the old #932# in the phone app. I'm sure it will give you the most accurate usage details. Of course, there's also the MyAccount app. I think that would probably be more apt than Data Sense because it's specifically a T-Mobile feature.

 

[MBY]

Thanks, both helpful suggestions. Separately from the MyAccount app (to get to your data you have to log in as if to the mobile site anyway) there's just logging into my account on the T-Mobile site.

Based on my latest data usage, it does seem like T-Mobile is not counting my Pandora data but Data Sense is counting it in figuring out how much I have left. Good to know.

 

[Eric J F]

I just talked to a T-Mobile US tech who said he was a Windows Phone specialist. He said their system can distinguish data use by apps and has 'whitelisted' the streaming apps listed in the ads (Pandora, Spotify, Slacker, etc). He said if we stream via a website it will count against the data plan.

 

[MBY]

Eric, thanks for the confirmation!

 

[Ordeith]

All T-Mobile had to do was change their throttled speed when you hit the cap. Move it from the current 60kbps to 260kbs and music streams would still function - from any source.