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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."
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.
...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.
Its a better deal than what I get from Verizon.
I wonder what the coverage is like, also if the phones will be any good.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Right, it wouldn't be because "Family" is synonymous with "group"? I have a family plan with a wireless provider, and guess what? It's for a group of phones.
What would be more interesting is if they are offering parental controls to the account holder.
Geeks don't grock information, they grep it.
If it's enough for the target market, this will be a big success. If not, it will be teh suck.
i'm neither for or against it either way. mobile access in the USA is very oligarchic - few companies who offer the same things. so this is different, and so good.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
> I dont want made you associate Family with Censorship.
It's not the GP's fault. Just think of the wide usage of the term "family-friendly" to mean "hostile to anything that could potentially offend someone."
I don't see why he got modded Troll.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
This "cost per gigabyte" isn't neccessarily a fair comparison.
Bottom line, maybe this plan isn't for you.
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.
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.
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
'Family' has now become a political codeword to mean 'Social conservative.' Look at Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, various state Family Policy Councils, etc. It's a convenient shorthand that allows for describing the organisations political views with a fair level of accuracy in a single word, but at the expense of tainting the word in other uses.