For T-Mobile USA customers who pay extra to watch high-definition video, one of the company's most annoying inventions was the "HD day pass." Instead of allowing video to stream in high definition at all times, T-Mobile has only let customers enable HD video for 24 hours at a time. Customers who pay for the $85-per-month "T-Mobile One Plus" plan are given "unlimited HD day passes," but to actually use them, you have to go to the T-Mobile app or website and change the video quality setting every single day.

That's finally about to change, T-Mobile told Ars. The move is an outgrowth of yesterday's decision to add HD video to the entry-level T-Mobile One plan that costs $70 a month. T-Mobile initially told us yesterday that there were no changes to the HD day passes, meaning that customers would still have to enable HD video every 24 hours or have video revert to 480p. Later yesterday, T-Mobile said that customers would only have to enable HD video once every 30 days.

But after hearing from angry customers, T-Mobile is going to make it "one and done." Starting Friday when the plan changes take effect, T-Mobile One customers will only have to enable HD video one time, and the feature will remain enabled as long as they have the same monthly plan, T-Mobile said today.

"Yesterday, we did have it at 30 days, but we heard from customers. We always listen to our customers and so now, you turn it on and you’re done," a T-Mobile spokesperson told Ars.

The change will apply to all three T-Mobile One plans, which have no data caps and overage fees and range in price from $70 to $95 a month. While the $70 plan gains HD video for the first time, the $85 and $95 plans that came with unlimited HD day passes will continue to get HD video without the need to enable it every day.

By default, all T-Mobile One plans limit video resolution to DVD quality. Enabling HD allows video to stream at the original resolution set by each video provider, according to T-Mobile. Originally, customers on the $70-per-month plan could get HD video for 24 hours at a time by purchasing HD day passes for $3 each.

Many customers are likely satisfied with 480p video on a smartphone screen, and setting that as the default lets T-Mobile limit bandwidth use, making network congestion less likely. But forcing customers to re-enable a feature they've paid for every day always seemed like an unnecessary nuisance, especially when customers were required to pay extra for HD video.

Changing it to once a month would have been an improvement, but the final decision to go to a "one and done" system is a more customer-friendly decision. If customers are actively choosing HD video, why force them to make the choice again every day? While T-Mobile always insisted that it was easy to activate an HD day pass, the policy could force customers to leave a video app and go into another app in order to activate higher-quality video. The soon-to-be-defunct policy probably helped reduce bandwidth usage, but it came at the expense of annoyed users.

The other major change announced yesterday pertains to high-speed tethering. The $70 T-Mobile One plan currently limits mobile hotspot speeds to 512kbps, but starting Friday, that same price tier will include 10GB of high-speed hotspot data per month. Customers will still have to buy the $95-per-month plan in order to get unlimited high-speed tethering data.

Existing customers will have to go into their account to accept the new terms and activate the 10GB of high-speed tethering. T-Mobile tells us this is necessary to meet a legal requirement. But like HD video, high-speed tethering will only have to be activated once after the changes take effect Friday.

T-Mobile's announcement yesterday came hours after Verizon said it would offer unlimited smartphone data for $80 per month and include HD video and 10GB of high-speed tethering.