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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."
Are you in the right thread? Wait... lemme guess.. your autopilot saw the words 'Walmart', 'Wireless', and 'Family" and you thought you had a cheap +3 Insightful. Right?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I dont want made you associate Family with Censorship. Family refers to purchasing in packs of more than 1. There used be a pepsi family 4-pack. Publix used to have a family pack bread. And all wireless providers offer family plans (none of which currently censor anything)
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.
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 $40 per gigabyte sounds unbelievable. I'm just passing on what I've read.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
Somehow I doubt Wal-Mart is going to drive AT&T and Verizon out of the wireless marketplace.....
Besides, the criticism that you've made applies more to Barnes and Noble than Wal-Mart. I've not personally observed Wal-Mart raising their prices after driving the competition away. I did observe Barnes and Noble jack up all their prices shortly after the last independent book store in my home town closed up shop.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm clearly behind on my political lingo here. WTF is a Classist Anti-Walmart Hipster? Is that like a statist job-killing Atheist? Or more like a fascist union muslim? Perhaps a statist fascist? A communist obamanaut with a hint of racism?
Please clue me in. I can't follow all the new definitions that you keep pumping out.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm having a difficult time hating wal-mart on this issue.
On one hand we have Walmart--a company known for undercutting their competitors and forcing everyone in their supply chain to work for peanuts...On the other we have a small collection of telecom giants forcing the U.S. market to pay inflated prices because of the lack of real competition.
Sometimes walmart puts up a necessary fight. Imagine what the music industry would be charging for a Ke$ha album if it wasn't for walmart's influence. Yeah $10-15 is still overpaying, but if the music industry had their way this garbage would probably be selling for $20-25USD today.
Yes walmart has a nasty track record of unfair competitive practices. But in this instance I think walmart has correctly identified a discrepancy in market pricing, and is now using its dominant position to profit and steer the industry in a more healthy direction
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.
(or fund a China-backed company),
Get over it. You live in a China-backed country. Who do you think is buying all those worthless 30-year T-bonds? China is, so Americans can keep going to WalMart and keep the Chinese factories in business.
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.
Cricket Broadband is only $40 a month, although not unlimited (high-speed changes to low-speed after 5 gigabytes).
VirginMobile offers cheap phone service for only $5 a month (25 minutes plus 20 cents each add'l minute) or $25 (300 minutes and unlimited texting).
For once Walmart is not the cheapest option.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.