Last updated: July 30, 2024
TDS Mobile is offered through the use of a third-party provider’s mobile network (referred to as our “Network Provider”). This policy provides information about device and data usage, mobile network practices, performance characteristics, and network security applicable to our TDS Mobile services. Because we use our Network Provider’s mobile network to deliver services to you, much of the information provided herein is based on the practices and characteristics of that network.
This policy is informational only and does not replace or alter the terms and conditions that govern your services. Your use of the TDS Mobile service is governed by the TDS Mobile Service Terms and any terms, conditions, and policies referenced therein, including TDS’s Acceptable Use Policy and the TDS Mobile Privacy Policy. All residential service terms and policies are available at: https://tdstelecom.com/policies.html.
1. Device Usage
TDS Mobile customers may attach 4G- and 5G-capable devices of their choice to access services, so long as the devices are FCC-approved; compatible with the technology used on our Network Provider’s mobile network; eligible on the customer’s plan; and do not harm our Network Provider’s network or other users. You can check your device compatibility at tds.com/compatibility. Devices must also be used in a manner consistent with the TDS Mobile Service Terms and Acceptable Use Policy.
Service performance may be impacted the capabilities of your device and the applications you use on your device.
2. Plan Limitations on Data Usage
We offer two mobile data plans—Unlimited and By-the-Gig. Customers can choose the plan that best reflects their own usage levels and the manner in which they intend to use their TDS Mobile service.
The Unlimited plan includes unlimited cellular data usage, up to 20 GB of high-speed cellular data usage per billing cycle, and up to 5 GB of hotspot data usage per billing cycle. If you you exhaust the allotment of high-speed data in a billing cycle, your service speed will slow and will only transmit data at a maximum of 256 (512) Kbps for the remainder of your billing cycle.
The By-the-Gig plan includes 1 GB of data usage in the base price; each additional GB of data used (or part thereof) will result in an additional, automatic charge at the time of overage, up to 5 GB. With this plan, your your high-speed data allotment is 6 GB per billing cycle. If you you exhaust this allotment in a billing cycle, your service speed will slow and will only transmit data at a maximum of 256 (512) Kbps for the remainder of your billing cycle.
Both cellular data usage and hotspot data usage apply towards your high-speed data allotment. Once speeds are slowed, your connection over the cellular network should still allow viewing static web pages or checking email; however, bandwidth-intensive activities such as audio and video streaming, picture and video messaging, and apps/services that use large amounts of data will be impacted and may not be fully functional. Once the next billing cycle begins, you will once again have high-speed data access.
You can reduce your cellular data usage by connecting your device to a Wi-Fi network. When your device is connected to a Wi-Fi network, you will not be consuming high-speed data from us. Note that when you are connected to a Wi-Fi network, your data speed will depend upon your device capability and that of the Wi-Fi network you are using. See the Service Terms for TDS Mobile for additional plan details and limitations.
In areas not served by our Network Provider’s networks, customers may be able to access data via off-network (or off-net) coverage (aka “roaming”) on another carrier’s network. When you are roaming, neither TDS nor our Network Provider guarantees the availability, quality of coverage, or speed for data services you receive while using other carriers’ networks. Additionally, our Network Provider reserves the right to reduce roaming data speeds or suspend roaming service entirely at any time without notice.
3. Network Security
Your security is very important us. Our Network Provider proactively monitors network activity to help guard against a wide range of security threats, including viruses, botnets, worms, distributed denial of service attacks, SPAM, and other harmful activity. Upon detecting a security threat, our Network Provider will attempt to isolate the threat and minimize the impact to network service, including blocking malicious or unlawful traffic, or redirecting the flow of traffic, or blocking ports that transfer malicious traffic, while seeking to avoid disrupting network service to end users.
4. No Guaranteed Performance Levels
Because many different factors can affect the performance of your mobile service, we do not guarantee specific performance levels, such as speed or latency. Additional information about these performance measures are discussed below.
4.1. Speed
The term “speed” is commonly used to describe the capacity at which a particular broadband service can transmit data and is typically measured in the number of kilobits, megabits or gigabits that can be transmitted in one second (Kbps, Mbps or Gbps). Some applications, like a short email without attachments or basic web browsing, do not require high-speed capability to function optimally. Other activities, like transferring large data files, can be performed faster with higher-speed services. Your service capability speed may not be suitable for some applications, particularly those involving real-time or near real-time, high bandwidth uses such as streaming 4K video or video conferencing.
Because service performance varies on an end-to-end basis, our service capability speeds are limited to, and measured between, your location and a point on our Network Provider’s mobile network, which constitutes only one segment of the end-to-end transmission path connecting your location to internet websites or content providers. End-to-end performance of your service depends on a variety of factors, including: the number of subscribers simultaneously using the network; customer location; destination and traffic on the internet; Wi-Fi connectivity; the capabilities and performance of your Local Area Network (LAN); interference with high frequency spectrum on your telephone line; wiring inside your premises, office or apartment; the capacity or performance of your devices or modem; the server with which you are communicating; internal network management factors (including overhead, which refers to the various control and signaling data required to achieve the reliable transmission of internet access data); and the networks you and others are using when communicating.
As discussed in Section 2 above, our data plans provide a monthly per-line allotment of high-speed data, after which the data transmission rate for that device will be limited to a significantly slower speed for the remainder of the bill cycle. In no case do we or our Network Provider guarantee particular minimum speeds for mobile services. Speeds available are affected by many different factors that can impact wireless network performance as discussed below. You may be able to access 5G speeds if your device is 5G compatible and you are in a coverage area with 5G-level service. You may also be able to access 4G LTE speeds if your device is 4G LTE compatible and you are in a coverage area with 4G LTE-level service.
Based on data compiled by our Network Provider, you can expect to experience the following speeds, subject to plan limits, location, device, and other factors as discussed in this Policy:
| Technology | Expected Download Range | Expected Upload Range |
|---|---|---|
| 4G LTE | 11-64 Mbps | 1-10 Mbps |
| 5G | 35-158 Mbps | 3-21 Mbps |
Note that when you are “roaming”, as discussed in Section 2 above, your speeds may be reduced to 2G speeds, or your data may be suspended altogether at any time without notice based on the availability of these networks.
4.2. Latency
Latency, also known as delay, is the amount of time from when a data packet is sent by a user over the network to when a response back to the user is received. For mass market broadband internet access services, latency is usually expressed as the round-trip time in milliseconds (ms) that it takes for a data packet to travel between two end points on the internet (from point A to point B and then back to point A). Some applications, such as email, can tolerate a substantial amount of latency without any noticeable impact on the application's performance. Other applications, such as real-time video conferencing, require lower latency levels to function properly. End-to-end latency reflects the cumulative effect of the individual latencies that occur along the end-to-end network path.
Based on data compiled by our Network Provider, you can expect to experience the following latency when accessing the internet:
| Technology | Expected Latency Range |
|---|---|
| 4G LTE | 28-47 milliseconds |
| 5G | 24-32 milliseconds |
5. Factors That May Affect The Performance of your TDS Mobile Service
In addition to the factors discussed above, the following variables may impact the performance of your TDS Mobile service.
5.1. Shared Network Infrastructure
Our Network Provider offers a wide variety of services, including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Internet Protocol (IP)-video, unified messaging, Voice over LTE (VoLTE), enterprise networking, public safety (including FirstNet), and national security services. These services all share network infrastructure and may rely on network practices to assign different levels of priority dynamically or statically. Use of these services may affect the availability of network resources for broadband internet access services, and thus the performance of your service. For example, your service may be interrupted, delayed, or otherwise limited in the event of a disaster or emergency, or during periods of congestion, to accommodate the needs of national security and emergency preparedness personnel. In addition, although our Network Provider manages its network to accommodate all users and user types based on a variety of factors, including average and anticipated peak usage of the network, many factors cannot be anticipated or are outside of its control. These factors can impact the availability of network resources for mass market broadband internet access services at any time. Consequently, we do not guarantee the performance of your service on an end-to-end basis.
5.2. Your Location; Cell Site Limitations; Roaming
Service performance may also be affected by your proximity to a cell site, the capacity of the cell site, the technology at the cell site, the number of other users connected to the same cell site and the services they are using, the surrounding terrain, use inside a building or a moving vehicle, radio frequency interference,. During simultaneous voice and data sessions, data performance may be affected, including but not limited to a temporary reduction in speed in order to minimize the likelihood of dropped calls. As discussed in Section 2 above, if you are outside the coverage area of our Network Provider’s network (aka “roaming”), service availability, speed, or quality is not guaranteed and may be completely unavailable.
5.3. Your Plan, Device, and Usage
Service performance may be impacted your mobile data plan, the capabilities of your device, and the applications you use.
5.4. Network Congestion; Interconnection Agreements
Because the Internet consists of multiple interconnected networks and most Internet end points (e.g., websites and other content providers) are not directly connected to our Network Provider’s network, our Network Provider must connect to and exchange traffic with other networks to provide you the capability of uploading data to or downloading data from Internet end points that are connected to those networks. To that end, our Network Provider has entered into commercially negotiated agreements to exchange traffic with those networks (and the networks with which those networks are connected) on mutually agreeable terms. The links networks use to exchange such traffic may become congested at times, including our Network Provider’s network. Consistent with its agreements with those other networks and its long-standing practice, our Network Provider may establish or expand the connections between its network and other networks, but only on mutually agreeable terms.
If our Network Provider was unable to reach agreement on terms of interconnection or network expansion with these other networks, it could affect your upload or download speeds. Neither we nor our Network Provider provider guarantees that you will be able to upload data to or download data from Internet end points connected to other networks at any particular speed.
In addition, like the other networks that make up the Internet, our Network Provider’s network is a shared network, which means that the transmission links and other network resources used to provide broadband services are shared among our subscribers, its own subscribers, and other various services offered by our Network Provider. Temporary congestion may occur when a large number of customers in a concentrated area access the network at the same time or when some customers consume a very large amount of network capacity during busy periods, such as at stadium events, during peak usage times, or during planned network maintenance. See Section 6.1 for additional information.
5.5. Net Neutrality; Response to Security Threats
Neither we nor our Network Provider prioritize certain websites or Internet applications by blocking or throttling lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, application, service, user, or use of nonharmful devices. Nor do we modify particular protocols, protocol ports, or protocol fields in ways not prescribed by the protocol standards. However, in response to a specific security threat against its network or its customers, our Network Provider may occasionally need to limit the flow of traffic from certain locations or take other appropriate actions.
