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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.
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.
Problem is that it has very limited data @ 100MB. Cue the "100MB is enough for the target market" folks.
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
Hell, two lines, unlimited voice, and paying extra for even 200MB of data would still be a hell of lot cheaper than what AT&T is offering now for a "family" iPhone plan.
When I traveled to Hong Kong and London w/ my unlocked iPhone I picked up prepaid SIMs for around $15 that were more than enough to cover voice and data while traveling, and were substantially less expensive than what I'm locked into at home in the US.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I wonder what the coverage is like
They are using T-Mobile's network. It'll be fine in major cities and utter crap in the countryside. Around these parts T-Mobile is useless if you venture more than two or three miles off the interstate.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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?
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'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.
Go with Verizon. Your immortal soul, coverage almost everywhere.
When you miss a payment, they claim your soul and put you to work in customer service.
Have you seen their new marketing slogan? "Rule the air!" Add the word 'minions' to the front and it sounds like The Monarch storming the Venture compound.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
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.
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.
That may be true, but if you do it right, it can be cheaper with T-Mobile. For example, I recently sprung for a Nokia N900 (really, it's the best phone ever.). I signed up for T-Mobile's individual plan with unlimited text, 500 minutes and the "I own my own hardware" discount. I also have a Skype account. If sign up for T-Mobile service over the Internet you can add-in the unlimited data for phones (not for smartphones), and save some cash on the data (like $10/mo), and the SIM card is free (you have to pay for it in the store.) Then set up call forwarding on your Skype account to forward to your phone (in case you're out of range for data service but still have voice service when someone calls) and only give out your Skype number. I've used a grand total of 50 plan minutes last month with over 1000 minutes on my Skype account from the phone during peak hours. Skype's basically a $6/mo unlimited minutes addon. The N900 integrates with Skype perfectly (so long as you type your numbers in your contacts list with a "+1" in front of the area code and number). You can do this with a few other phones as well. (Just not Android phones with the T-Mobile markings, which can't use the data for phones plan add-on at all. Also, you may have to change which APN your phone uses to get it to work (internet2.voicestream.com is the APN if I recall). Just search howardforums for directions.)
Grand total for essentially unlimited talk, text and data (with tethering) through T-Mobile and Skype (with taxes, assuming Skype is paid annually) = $56/mo. Only MetroPCS is cheaper but only by $6/mo and you can't tether.
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
When I traveled to Hong Kong and London w/ my unlocked iPhone I picked up prepaid SIMs for around $15 that were more than enough to cover voice and data while traveling, and were substantially less expensive than what I'm locked into at home in the US.
My UK landline (£14/month) has unlimited calls to 36 countries, including the USA... without that, calls to the USA are 8p or 13p/minute (depending on time of day).
That compares well to AT&T's offering, where $23/month line rental plus $5/month (for "Worldwide Value Calling") gets you "discounted" calls to the UK for an incredible $2.29 or $3.17/minute. No wonder my American relatives email me, asking me to call.
Actually, you can do this with T-mobile smartphones too. I bought a HTC HD2 off the craigslist, loaded Android into it. Its a T-mobile branded and locked phone but I was still able to add the $10/mo unlimited web for phones (not the $25/mo smartphones plan). Another neat trick was being able to setup fring and getting google voice to work with it (via sipgate and sipsorcery). I get free incoming and outgoing calls using this method. I just hand out my google voice number. I have been an AT&T customer for more than 6 years but I couldn't take it anymore!