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Wal-Mart To Launch Unlimited Wireless Family Plan
adeelarshad82 writes "Wal-Mart has announced that it will sell a post-paid wireless service powered by T-Mobile, which will be targeted at families. Users who sign up for Wal-Mart Family Mobile service will not have to sign a contract. The first line will cost $45 per month, and each additional line will cost $25 per month. Each line will have unlimited talk and text, so overage charges will not be an issue. For data access, each phone will come pre-loaded with a 100MB card known as a WebPak, which is shared among all lines on an account. Data does not expire, and refill cards can be purchased in Wal-Mart stores or online. The WebPak can also be used to make international calls at 5 cents per minute to any landline number in about a dozen countries."
I don't know why, but this "Family" thing in the name of the service makes me think of censorship.
On-line games will be certified to be non-violent and you will not be allowed to download Heavy Metal music, I suppose.
Feels good, man. Cheap wireless readily available is good wireless.
For the many of us who don't want to pay for their legal and PR team(or fund a China-backed company), is there a way to go to a more direct source (e.g. T-Mobile?)?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It sounds like a fairly good deal for the US and for more, uh, parsimonious consumers.
As phone and text, it's great, IOW. And that's where the usage seems to be for lower end consumers.
Probably not for the average ./er's kind of data consumption, but still a welcome addition to the US mobile market.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
...Is that the company I despise the most in this country is the one that came up with the smartest mobile phone plan.
Really, why can't any of the big-name mobile carriers come out with a no-nonsense plan with affordable rates like this one? We've been screaming for years for mobile plans w/o contracts, w/o hidden fees, w/o metered rates, and w/o surprises that come with the end-of-the-month bill. Why did it take Walmart to figure out what the consumer wanted? Hell, if T-Mobile could just sell this exact plan sans Walmart, I'd jump on it in half-a-heartbeat.
Why do people have so much difficulty in looking beyond the pounds/dollars/euros that they're saving in order to see what these huge retailers are trying to do?
In the UK, our biggest supermarket is Tesco with Asda (owned by Wal-Mart) in second place. Now that these companies have trashed any form of local retailer, they have to expand into new areas to swell their profits; this is why they now offer mobile phones, home insurance, pharmaceuticals and even home mortgages in some instances.
When is the populace going to wake up & realise that cheap is not necessarily best? These companies will not be satisfied until you use them for everything you need, right from birth to death - yet they also pay minimum wages & have dubious practices when it comes to employee rights.
Wake up, people!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...to burst into flames over this one.
"Walmart is EEEEEEvil! And by EEEEEEvil I mean that Jon Stewart has indicated that only fat Midwestern people with children shop there! But... but... this is such a good deal, and I am so-o-o-o-o addicted to my smart and shiny texting lifestyle... Hmmm, I wonder, if I stencil a silver Apple logo onto the back of this, how will it look, will anyone notice...?
Is there a catch to Walmart's offerings? You bet. The available data plans are blindingly expensive, locking out much of the lucrative and quickly growing smartphone market. A single gigabyte of prepaid data through Walmart costs $40, which is quite steep compared to AT&T's 2GB for $25 per month, or T-Mobile's $30 per month for unlimited data.
So says Ars Technica, anyway. I don't know much about the market for mobile Internet, but $40 per gigabyte sounds unbelievable. I'm just passing on what I've read.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
I'm clearly behind on my political lingo here. WTF is a Classist Anti-Walmart Hipster? Is that like a statist job-killing Atheist? Or more like a fascist union muslim? Perhaps a statist fascist? A communist obamanaut with a hint of racism?
Please clue me in. I can't follow all the new definitions that you keep pumping out.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The category is Communist Job-Killing Atheistic Sikrit Muslin Obamanaut With A Hint Of _REVERSE_ Racism, you behind-the-times nerd loser.
Yes, heaven forbid anyone criticize Walmart! Anyone who does, must HATE AMERICA!
So if you don't have to sign anything, they(Walmart) really have no fiduciary duty/responsibility that inhibits them from selling and or using any and all data, voice, and text sent in cooperation with T-Mobile. In addition you have no legal recourse once said data is used. Fuck Walmart.
Glenn Beck fan spotted.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Ok, I'll take the bait...
A lot of people don't like Walmart for a lot of different reasons. Small business owners (and former small business owners) often dislike WM for making competition difficult, especially in rural areas. Manufacturers may dislike WM because of the constant pressure to lower prices as far as possible, which often results in SKUs specific to WM that use inferior parts, or companies which choose not to do business with them because their product quality would decline unacceptably. Humanitarians dislike WM because of the well-publicized abhorrent treatment of employees, such as locking them in the store overnight and paying lower wages/offering fewer benefits than the industry standard in areas where little other work is available.
All in all, the one thing WM does well, to the exclusion of nearly all other goals, is make consumer goods as cheap as possible, putting the most products within the reach of the most people possible. In other words, use of the term "classist" to describe their opponents is pure bullshit. Anti-consumerist, sure; anti-corporate, maybe, but you'll find that you make more sense if you choose words that actually have some bearing on the point you're trying to make.
As to hipsters, just because a large percentage of self-important assholes believe something doesn't make it wrong. Conversely, just because you and I share a dislike of pretentious douches doesn't make you right.
Sorry for the rant, but seeing this shit modded up as insightful is a little too much.
There is a market for people who dont use smartphones. Some people will never have a need to use the web/online apps from their phone
I worked for metroPCS for a year. I would never use their service, but they really hit home with the $35 all you can eat talk and text. For the budget conscious person or "phones are meant for talking" crowd, this plan is great. Along came Cricket(metro was in my area first though i believe cricket existed first) to offer the same thing. People ate it up. These two companies had piss poor service outside large cities and suburbs, but they offered the people something reasonable. If you dont travel its great. Fast forward and now Boost Mobile offers a truly flat rate for talk, text and 2way. Today we see Walmart and Tmobile team up. This is the best offer yet for the budget crowd because i think Tmo offers the best coverage for their prepaid maps.
Will they offer the latest and greatest phones? No. They dont have to. Their target audience probably wouldnt have much use for even the most basic feature phones(maybe qwerty, camera, and bluetooth) Another reason is to keep costs down. Without a contract, the company cannot subsidize the phone purchase. Average Joe isnt going to buy a $500 phone if all it does is talk and text. he might buy that $100 phone that lets him shoot pictures and connect a handsfree headset or wired earpiece though. Afterall, those might be useful.
The bottom line here is that there will always be a market where the dumbphone remains relevant.
Walmart wants money. Money comes from (within a certain margin) sales. Most consumers want cheap, though many of the rest of us think on quality and some on moral grounds.
More consumers = more more.
I doubt I'd buy a Walmart phone, but I would absolutely relish watching the downward forces on other greedy telcos to give the customer a better rate and stop screwing us for each penny. That being said, what I *wouldn't* like is if hits the point where quality suffers, but that's a consistently dropped call is a bit more visible than an easily-worn piece of clothing, hardware, etc.
Uh, and where exactly are the local cellular retailers? For anyone who ever guys outside of their home-town... the options are pretty much all on a national level.
I live in a small city, and one thing that doesn't often factor into the story is that - for a long time - local retailers made big bucks fleecing the local populace, often at quality not much better (if at all better) than Walmart. Lack of options means that a certain portion of the populace is at your mercy.
That's not to say that I haven't seen *GOOD* businesses get flushed as well, but there were plenty that were happy to pay their employees minimum dime, charge exorbitant prices (even with low costs), and generally do everything Walmart is reviled for. The good thing about Walmart is that it creates other options, the *bad* thing is that it eliminates them. Choice is always a good thing.
ridiculous! i can go the local Dollar Store or FYE and get a Tracfone for $4.88 and service for less than $7 a month using a $19 card! BS!
In the battle for the corporate branding of everything, Walmart owns the minimum-wage-and-under mindset.
Some call it evil, some call it an opportunity. Walmart currently calls it a $400+ billion dollar a year business.
I'll know it's time to leave when the law says I am required to buy things from one of them or go to jail.
Well said.
After factoring in all of the taxes added to your monthly phone bill, your $45 plan usually looks more like $62 out of your pocket a month. It sounds like with this plan, $45 really means $45.
Everyone jump on the walmart hating bandwagon why don't you. I have an Aunt that worked at walmart as a checker for most of her life. She was a single mom and that job bought her a house and helped her raise 5 children (father was a deadbeat) then Walmart paid, in full, the entire college tuition of her eldest daughter through a program walmart has. If you don't want to buy Chinese made crap, then don't Walmarts selling what people want to buy. This cellular plan is a fine example of exactly what they do. We all know cellular plans are ridiculously over priced... look at any other country in the world and it's obvious. Walmart comes in and not only undercuts everyone else, they undercut them to the point it makes the other carriers look like idiots. And just like every other market they enter, this doesnt just mean walmart shoppers get lower prices, it means all the other carriers will have to drop their prices as well to prevent their customers from leaving in droves.
will sell a post-paid wireless service . . . The first line will cost
Am I the only one that see this?
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
In the CD market, I figure it's Amazon as much as anybody else.
(Ke$ha's album Animal is holding steady on Amazon at $11.88 BTW, right in your $10-$15 range)
Amazon, especially with Prime [free shipping], is one heckuva cheap CD store.
Indies who also sell stuff off their own sites are the only notable price comparison/competition I'm aware of, and on those I'd bother looking off-Amazon. For example, MC Lars' This Gigantic Robot Kills at $12 instead of $14.98
(BTW, I would definitely recommend Lars, especially amongst the /. crowd; his geeky lyrics [which he's not limited to] probably would go over well here I would think.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Walmart is going to be very good for the phone industry. Walmart is very good at delivering CHEAP. Now the assholes that run AT&T and Verizon etc might have to compete on actual service instead of relying on monopoly.
Currently hooked on AMP
"Humanitarians dislike WM because of the well-publicized abhorrent treatment of employees, such as locking them in the store overnight"
As far as I know, all Wal-Mart Supercenters are open 24 hrs/day and only close one day out of the year (Christmas Day), so how could employees be locked in the store overnight?
the criticism that you've made applies more to Barnes and Noble than Wal-Mart. I've not personally observed Wal-Mart raising their prices after driving the competition away. I did observe Barnes and Noble jack up all their prices shortly after the last independent book store in my home town closed up shop.
There's Amazon and other cheap online sellers too. I have B&N's discount card but I still buy from Amazon. B&N, Borders, and other large book store chains have no business complaining about Amazon. Amazon gives them competition like they gave local businesses competition. As for those local shops, I knew 2 people who owned their own bookstores, one ended up selling the store but the other store after 40 years is still open. Back in the '90s when the web came along they opened their own online store so they've expanded their own reach. Amazon even made it easy for local stores to fulfill online orders for a cut.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
you can be lazy and shop at the same time if you have a computer, internet connection and credit card
Without being able to hold a product before I buy it, how can I decide what I really want to buy? For example, if I'm buying clothes online, how can I be sure they will fit? Or if I buy a laptop, how can I make sure the screen looks OK and the key pitch and travel are right for my fingers?
or not using the phone for 2+ hours/day during work hours, in which case even the cheapest contracts will be more than enough to cover you...
For some use patterns, non-contract is cheaper than the cheapest contract. I pay $5/mo to Virgin Mobile USA (a Sprint company) precisely because I don't use my dumbphone as a land-line replacement. The drawback is that it makes it harder for me to find a smartphone because the last time I checked, the local Best Buy Mobile store didn't have any Android handsets on Virgin; all they have is BlackBerry.
As someone who recently allowed my Net10 phone subscription (note "subscription" -- not "contract") to expire (though I could probably with some amount of effort unbricked the phone); I am forced to ask *why* are people willing to pay $500+ per year to be able to talk to people whenever they feel like it [1]? What is so all fired important about being "connected" 24/7 when most of us can be connected 18/7 without any additional payments (being connected at work or home) and we presumably have to sleep 6-8 of those 24?
So far in my memory 9/11 has only happened once in a decade and the probability of securing a cell phone connection during that period would fall into a category that I would call "iffy". So what is the point?
Obviously if one is paying a phone company $500+ per year one is paying them $5000+ over ten years and I can think of much better alternatives for such a sum than an extortion fee simply to talk to people.
1. Or allow them to disturb you whenever *they* feel like it?
--a company known for undercutting their competitors and forcing everyone in their supply chain to work for peanuts..
Nothing stops those competitors from lowering their prices, and businesses can refuse to deal with Walmart. Take for instance The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart.
Yes walmart has a nasty track record of unfair competitive practices.
I've heard this before but I've never seen any actual charges against them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Hello, and welcome to the internet!
Let me tell you about one of our best-kept secrets. It's called "Google", one of a number of "search engines", and it's very, very useful to help prevent you from looking like a complete moron!
For instance, if you type in "walmart locked in overnight" (without quotes-- an easy mistake for a beginner LOL!), the first "link" (usually blue, underlined text you can click on to take you to a different page) is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/us/workers-assail-night-lock-ins-by-wal-mart.html
Amazing!
Wal Mart is a shopping center which caused bankrupcy of dozens small shops. People who working in Wal Mart are "XXI century slaves".
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
"There are 2,772 Supercenters nationwide, and most are open 24 hours." Non super-centers, from the same page, make no mention of this. So no, not all super-centers and not all stores beyond that.
Using 250 megs per moth! They have no sense of the value of moths!
walmart is not offering this t-mobile is. if you go to the t-mobile website they have the same plain for prepaid phones. http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx?WT.mc_n=PrePdPlnsOvrMain&WT.mc_t=OnsiteAd
I am surprised nobody has brought this up yet. Usually, you get a free, or nearly free, phone with your contract. But not at walmart, be prepared to pay around $200 for your smart phone.
Also, I don't think T-Mobile has a reputation for the best coverage. And T-Mobile is usually cheap anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that walmart is bad deal. But, I think these things should be taken into consideration, just to put things into perspective.
Anything reasonable available in Canada?
Your Aunt is a hero (thus the capital letter is more than appropriate), if she has passed away all I can give is my respect but if she's still around then the next time you see her please tell her that a complete stranger thinks she's a hero because he read what she accomplished and give her a hug.
And good on Wal-Mart too for having a program like that.
I use a tmobile prepaid card in my Treo most of the time anyway, this would work out to be a better deal if I used the phone more often. Anyone know if these are GSM phones and if the SIM card can be pulled out?
--- Do you believe in the day?
The fact that every book that's currently in print is only a few mouse clicks and a credit card away?
At a bookstore, I can look inside almost every book to see if it's something I'd want to read. On Amazon, half the publishers seem not to have enabled Look Inside, so it's as if the book is shrink-wrapped.
I've not been to Soho for at least 10 years now so I don't know how the independent music stores are doing
I haven't looked for music in a while but there are at least 2 local stores in walking distance. They both sell new and used media, that is CDs, tapes, and vinyl records. I don't have one now but I'd like to get a vinyl record turntable, then when I do I'll buy vinyl records. It will be a while before then though, I also want to get a new reel-to-reel tape deck. That way the first tyme I play a record I'd record it on tape then play the tape and keep the record for safe keeping. But money is in short supply.
In the case of those stores, consumer tastes and the rise of Amazon are probably as much of a contributory factor to their demise as cheaper products offered in supermarkets - but it still amounts to less consumer choice.
Those shops near me even sell records from the '60s and '70s. The last tyme I went into one it had a new White Album and when I saw it I had to hold myself back from dashing to a store to buy a new turntable. Just so I could play it, ages ago when I did have a turntable that was one of the albums in my collection. That and some Carlos Santana and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. I didn't have it then but I want to get In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida as well. And I can get some if not all of those at the stores near me today.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I am surprised nobody has brought this up yet. Usually, you get a free, or nearly free, phone with your contract. But not at walmart, be prepared to pay around $200 for your smart phone.
Walmart shows a number of cellphones free with service contracts, including Blackberries.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?