T-Mobile Shutting Down the "T-Zones Loophole"?

By WC Staff
last updated

jkOnTheRun notes that lots of people are experiencing data connection problems with T-Mobile and theorizes that the possible reason is that T-Mobile has finally gotten wise to the "T-Zones Loophole", which allows you to get access to the full internet while only paying for the supposedly WAP-ony T-Zones service. A photo of an internal T-Mobile document backs this up.

It's intermittent (I haven't experienced it yet) and not limited to T-Zones users. Have you had any hassles lately with data plans?

Some folks are offering the theory that T-Mobile finally caught on to users who have been using the web services by exploiting a hole in T-Mobile’s setup and that the carrier has blocked all the various ports to shut that down.  That is backed up by this internal T-Mobile Customer Service screen (posted on Howard Forums) to help reps deal with calls about this issue:

Read: jkOnTheRun: T-Mobile data plans suddenly stop working

WC Staff
WC Staff
4 Comments
  • I was hit by the data outage. My phone stopped receiving all data last Friday. Yesterday, the data connection started working again. I don't know if it's being shut down or not, I'm just happy it's working for now.http://www.kirkwalsh.com
  • Yes, I also experienced 2 days of no-service here in Illioins. I don't use "loophole", however my treo having a prepaid t-mobile sim card has done whatever internet related thing I threw at it: Web (non-wap view), pop3 gmail, google maps and streaming radio. I'm very happy with t-mobile. BTW, the best data rate I got from their EDGE service was 1round 130kbps, but it's usually around 70~80kbps, which is good enough for me, The only problem is that upload speed is not fast enough, sending photos I took as an attachment to emails proved to be a bit problematic.
  • This happened to me last week. I called T-Mobile and told them that I could no longer access the internet. I have the $5 plan, and was told that their servers have started checking out what people's phones were doing, and that if you were getting internet on the $5 plan, especially with the Dash that they were turning it off. The rep said that I would have to pay the $29.99 for internet access since the $5 "should" not work on the Dash. I told them that I was never told that when I bought the Dash and was not going to pay $30 bucks a month for EDGE. I told the rep I would cancel my account, she said that she could try adding the $5 internet back to my plan, but she wasn't sure if it would work. It did, and I'm back to having internet on my Dash at $5 a month. If they do this to you call and complain.
  • I had this same problem. I was down for two days, tried messing with all my settings. Finally I called and talked to the phone support center and was told that they had started reconciling peoples data usage with what they had paid for and that they had changed my APN and closed the loophole. She also told me that web2go is not intended for any internet usage at all (I questioned why it would be worth having then) and that it simply would not work on my dash like it used to work on my razr because it was simply too smart a phone. I told her I had been using it for 2 years first on my dash and then on my dash 3g. I said thank you, hung up the phone, did a hard reset and set the proxy back up. Works perfectly again. Oh and i found a work around for the famously expensive WMWifirouter program that will let you use the trial version over and over. I use my phone as a router to get internet on my ipod touch at work. Friggin sweet. Put a fan on your phone though.