Back in April, we shared that T-Mobile was planning to enforce address verification for their Home Internet customers. That planned enforcement was delayed in May, partially due to the delay of the company’s new Away plan.
The Away plan has finally launched, and so the address enforcement is now back on track. Customers not using 5G Home Internet at the address they signed up with should be on alert.
As shown in a new document shared with us here at The Mobile Report, T-Mobile will indeed be verifying address compliance on customers using the unlimited Home Internet plan.
As we said in previous coverage, many customers were signed up for unlimited Home Internet using an alternate address they had access too or sometimes even a neighbor’s address. There were many “tricks” used to bypass ineligible locations to get through signup. We’ve even been told some employees were encouraged and instructed to “work around the issue” to get signups. Now these customers will suffer the consequences of those actions.
While it’s not clear for sure how the verification is being handled, the document mentions an SOC code required to disable alerts to the customer called HIGEOFENC. It’s easy to extrapolate that that means “Home Internet Geofence”, and could imply the company is using the internal GPS on their Home Internet gateways to verify addresses.
Customers that receive an alert and want to keep the service will have two options. First, they may begin using the gateway at the address previously registered during signup. Alternatively, they can try to register a new address for where they’re really using the device, and if it’s an address eligible for unlimited, they’ll be good to go.
If neither of those options work out, customers must either switch to another plan that doesn’t require address verification (which is currently either Home Internet Lite or the new Away plan), or cancel service all together.
Regardless of which option is chosen, customers impacted must contact support, either from home or at the original store location where they signed up, to handle the issue. It’s unclear what will happen if customers ignore the warnings, but the likely outcome is a suspended and eventually cancelled line of service.
The enforcement begins June 20th.
