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T-Mobile Ends Contracts and Subsidies
AlphaWolf_HK writes "In what I see as a refreshing change, T-Mobile, the fourth largest carrier in the U.S., has made sweeping changes to its service, ending both phone subsidies and service contracts. Its CEO said, 'Here's the deal: If we suck this month, go somewhere else. If we're good, stay with us.' As part of that change, the new base plan will include unlimited access, including voice, text, and data. Data will be restricted to edge speeds after 500MB with no overage costs, but can be upgraded to 2.5GB for $10, or unlimited for $20. Portable Wi-Fi hotspot usage is also unrestricted for no additional cost. In addition, LTE services just went live in eight markets. As is already standard practice with T-Mobile, you are free to bring your own device. To keep customers from having to front the full cost of the phone with unsubsidized plans, they'll let people pay off phones in installments. They're also getting the iPhone 5 next month for $650."
A move in the right direction.
That's more then Comcast prefers I use.
It is supposed to be 500MB. You don't usually "upgrade" from 500GB to 2.5GB of data for $10 a month.
It sounds like T-Mobile is going to be offering reasonable, attractive cell phone plans. Wow. I'm genuinely surprised that such a large carrier is moving in this direction. Good on them.
The best plans, the best prices, the best phones, and the hottest spokesgirl.
Upgrade from 500 GB to 2.5 GB? Is that supposed to be "by 2.5 GB?"
~Jarmihi
I can only hope the big 2 will follow along.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
This is a bold step for T-Mobile and I hope that they succeed. However I am somewhat concerned as I have already seen too many people complain that they'd have to foot the bill for the full cost of the phone. The math would may prove to be difficult for people who are not good at it.
My contract is up soon and not only am I sick of AT&T ratcheting up costs every so often, but I'm also sick of how fucking shitty the iPhone is (seriously, as a piece of consumer hardware, the iPhone is a steaming turd. Most people don't notice because they throw it out every 1-2 years). I am more than ready to end my relationship with those companies and I like the sound of what TMobile is selling.
Does "unlimited" mean unlimited here? If so, I'm cancelling my home internet and using tethering from now on.
Wow all kinds of errors. It is 500MB and the $10 extra a month is for 2GB not 2.5GB. Wifi hotspot is unresticted for all plans except unlimited. The new cell pricing has a small down payment with a $20 a month fee added to your bill for 24 months. I believe this is a great step in the right direction.
Nice to see a carrier doing the right thing. I bought a iPhone 5 unlocked, from Apple (yeah, I know) so that I could use it on T-mobile. I have never had any complaints about T-mobiles service, and I have been with them for a freaking long time.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
...the $600 price tags on phones. As a T-Mobile customer, I hope this isn't a sign of them about to go out of business.
T-Mobile is by far the least evil, and that's based on years of observation, not this announcement.
The difference between T-Mobile management and Google's for example, is that the latter has to remind themselves not to be evil.
They are the weakest of the Big 4 and are going all in. I hope it works, if only to keep AT&T / Verizon honest.
However I am somewhat concerned as I have already seen too many people complain that they'd have to foot the bill for the full cost of the phone. The math would may prove to be difficult for people who are not good at it.
They could phrase it like this:
Pay Later: $199 down + $15/month for 24 months
Pay Now: $549
The down payment on the Pay Later choice would reasonably match the price with contract on other carriers.
If they really were thinking about customers, the contract would be a no-penalty cancel-anytime-you-want contract that would lock you in for a specific price for a non-trivial amount of time.
I'm skeptical and will stick with AT&T out of laziness for a while. Prove me wrong T-Mobile and I'll switch. But even though cellular has been one-sided customer-screwing contracts since the inception of the service - contracts can actually protect _both_ parties if you do them right. No contract == No guarantee.
Lobbying, mostly. The barrier to starting a new mobile telco (or even a traditional ISP) is massive, although the limited availability of spectrum is also a problem. If you are not familiar with the concept of lobbying, that is because it is known as corruption in most other countries.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Is ending subsidization really going to appeal to the mass consuming public? How many teenagers have $650 for a new iPhone? You'd think they'd offer some kind of optional secondary loan plan where you pay off a little bit every month, or owe the whole amount if you want to change carriers.
you didn't even need to click into the article to see that is exactly what they are doing, summary itself says
To keep customers from having to front the full cost of the phone with unsubsidized plans, they'll let people pay off phones in installments.[
If only there as an article that talks about T-Mobile doing that very thing~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I second that. Also can someone find the asshat that is posting this shit and BREAK HIS FUCKING LEGS?
Or, y'know, you could chill the fuck out and ignore him. I browse at 0 all the time (with ACs like me down to -1 by default), and I wouldn't have even seen any trace of this thread if you didn't open your goddamned mouth. Now, thanks to you, there's a post on this thread that started at 1 and that some asshole moderator actually modded UP to 2, leaving an abbreviated message link that points everyone to the damn thread. So yeah. Way to fucking go, dipshit.
I left T-Mobile at the end of last year when my contract expired, and have been using the MVNOs that use the T-Mobile airwaves on pre-paid (PTel specifically) to save money. It's been working well, and was much cheaper than T-Mobile's previous pre-paid offerings for what I needed. However I discovered there's some missing features that pre-paid doesn't give you and no one really points out until you already switched:
* no call forwarding (for google voice voicemail)
* no visual voicemail
* no short code sms texting (except often they'll allow Twitter and Facebook)
Now that T-Mobile's prices are more in line with their MVNOs (and cheaper if you have multiple lines) and they don't even offer contracts, does this mean all those features that you lost going pre-paid would be available again? While none of those features would have been worth the extra cost of a contract, it would be a great reason to pick T-Mobile over the other smaller pre-paid operators. I'll have to call them and see if their CSRs even know the answers to these questions (I doubt it yet, someone will have to be the guinea pig), but it does make me want to switch back if that's the case.
Reading is *hard*!
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Instead of a subsidy, you get a loan to pay for the phone. This is a good deal for the customer if the interest rate isn't too high. It can be a good deal for the company if the interest is high enough. Hopefully they don't go nuts and securitize a bunch of sub-prime phone bonds and market them as AAA to banks.
They shouldn't try to obfuscate the fact that they're getting into finance. This can be just fine if it's done right; but it can be a disaster if done wrong--a bunch of poor people who have one more debt pushing them towards bankruptcy.
Why is this? Other than 'muricans are dim fucks that put up with any shit?
The problem is that one can't just start his own cell phone network, with blackjack and hookers, because an oligopoly of four companies have snapped up effectively all the spectrum in the cellular bands. One must either put up with what the spectrum cartel offers or do without cellular service. If you believe I've presented a false dilemma, please feel free to explain your third option.
Umm, yeah. That's exactly what they do.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Let's check out the fine print (is unlimited data really unlimited? etc., etc.) but if T-Mobile is honestly offering unlimited calls, data, tethering, and text without a contract then NOW you can vote with your dollars and switch. If you miss this opportunity to support them on this and send a real message to the other carriers, then you have no right to complain about the state of cell phone service in the US.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I hope the FTC takes note of this. Good things are happening because companies have to innovate to compete instead of take refuge in mega-mergers.
Data will be restricted to edge speeds after 500GB with no overage costs, but can be upgraded to 2.5GB for $10, or unlimited for $20.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Great. Now all they need to do is expand coverage - as much as I want to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile, it won't do me much good if half the time I can't get a signal.
Question for anyone with T-Mobile currently: I've been talking with my wife about switching to the prepaid, 100 minutes/month, unlimited text/data plan, but a big hangup is that her hometown is in the "Service Partner" coverage area on the T-Mobile coverage map. What data speeds/caps do the prepaid plans in service partner areas, if they are allowed to use data at all?
I am currently a T-mobile customer, and had a chance to look over the plans. Very excited by this new approach, and hope other providers follow suit.
It's important to note however that tethering (Smartphone Mobile HotSpot, or SMH) is not unlimited, even with the unlimited data plans. The unlimited data plan included 500MB of tethered data, and you can buy more (apparently for $10 per 2GB, but not confirmed.) If you're primarily interested in tethered data, it might make sense to buy the 2.5GB plan, which costs $10 less, and includes 2.5GB of tethered data.
Unfortunately, it looks like T-mobile may be eliminating some of it's other low cost plans with this move. My current plan is $30/mo for more 1500 talk/text minutes, and 30MB of data. 30MB is enough to check a map when I need it, and I can use wifi for my typical data use.
If you have concerns about T-Mobile's coverage, you can supplement it by purchasing an inexpensive daily use phone from Verizon. Pay $2/day when you're traveling outside a T-Mobile coverage zone.
This could be really good for T-mobile. The Kodoo folks have been doing something similar, tossing aside contracts and letting people pay down a "tab" for their phone. I believe Kodoo is the fastest growing carrier in Canada and among the people I know who use them they have a high level of customer satisfaction. Assuming T-mobile has reasonably priced plans they could do very well.
FINALLY, it would appear the free market is starting to work its magic. It's almost inevitable that phone calls and mobile internet access will be free or almost next to free some day. That day appears a little sooner thanks to this news.
However, I still think it should be a government service, since like roads, it's basic infrastructure. Maybe the government and Google (for the expertise) can get together at some point to make that work.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
No contracts may open the door for me to see what offerings they have. I'm never going to sign a 2 year contract for anything ever again. Burned by those a couple times, that's it. They're simply a legal document allowing a company to take money from me for service I haven't used.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I used to go through 500MB easily in one surfing session before NoScript. Webmasters using modern tools think nothing of sending you whatever you will accept, such as a ten megabyte video streaming file to open up and play on the side as an ad for cars or some movie trailer...
Once people begin being charged for this, they are apt to adopt technologies which block ads, and webmasters-paid by the ad transmitted-will do all in their power to send anything only after they have confirmed the ad streams are transferring. Many business sites have already adopted such technology, and they will be very expensive to visit.
I would almost like to see NoScript start flashing a dollar sign next to sites which need to be enabled. Then load the executive computers with NoScript so the executives who hired the webmaster will see what their customers are seeing. One of the biggest problems we have had on the internet is the executives are generally running on high-speed local networks using a monolithic browsing system and do not get a true "customer experience" when visiting their own site.
But it can also be argued that the CEO of large corporations time is too valuable to be wasted having a customer experience.
I wonder if the next big wave of lawsuits will be over people "stealing" content from the web because they adopted ad-refusal technologies.
I have already lived long enough to see lawsuits where unauthorized access to as little as a song invoked thousands of dollars in legal fees, while tax havens specifically crafted to avoid tax collections, operating in the Caribbean and Indonesian islands, continue to operate. This one-sided law is wearing heavily on my respect for law - its seeming more and more like organized muggery every day.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I'm on their older prepaid (no-contract) plan. $30/mo for 100 minutes, unlimited text, and unlimited data (first 5GB at best speeds, then down to Edge). Kinda sad that it's gone now.
From the t-mobile web page, below the big banner saying "No annual contract":
General Terms: At participating locations. Domestic only. Credit approval, $35/line activation fee, and two-year contract with up to $200/line early cancellation fee required; deposit may apply. If you switch plans you may be bound by existing or extended term (including early cancellation provisions) and/or charged an up to $200 fee. You may be unable to switch to some plans.
Maybe it's just a glitch but I wouldn't bank on it.
For what it's worth: I'm a T-mobile customer. This new deal would cost me $5/month more than I pay now. It would get more but it's more than I don't actually use.
I'd feel more confidence in their announcement if I hadn't recently abandoned a dispute with T-Mobile, after they unilaterally changed the terms of my contract. I was promised on three separate occasions by T-Mobile staff that I could change my minutes/month plan at any time without any fees or changes to my plan, until I actually tried to do it. Then, surprise! they changed that clause, and now I'd have to restart my contract over with a new 24-month commitment. When I asked to talk to their service department, I was given a physical address and told that the post is the only way to contact them. And would you believe they never wrote me back? I'm used to dealing with soulless bureaucrats at big companies like this, but the level of disregard and complete indifference I was shown by T-Mobile was something very special.
carriers will start advertising service differences in main stream media
You mean like Verizon's "there's a map for that" ads, back when AT&T was still EDGE-only in a lot of markets, followed by AT&T's Christo-inspired ads?
In case you haven't noticed (by reading the summary) you can now do these things with t-mobile.
http://www.justsaypictures.com/images/stupid-europeans-or-are-they-americans.jpg
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I'd say so. I just switched to the new plan this morning. I still even have roaming access, which I *think* (correct me if I'm wrong) isn't available on MVNO's.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
..... are shockingly expensive.
It amazes me that in the US you're expected to pay extra for voicemail, SMS packages, tethering etc. These are the basic services that make even a dumb phone usable. Without them, you may as well be sending smoke signals.
I'm currently with 3 Ireland. I paid €100 for my HTC Explorer. I pay €20 per month for unlimited SMS messages, unlimited data, unlimited calls to numbers on the same network, unlimited weekend calls to any number. Every time I top up by €20, I get €10 free credit. I get free tethering to my laptop. The only time my credit is used is when I call numbers during the week that aren't on the 3 network.
Ireland is a small country with four main networks. Competition is pretty tough, but having a mobile phone is pretty cheap. My 8 year old nieces and nephews have their own phones, and pay for the majority of their credit themselves from pocket money etc.
One of the universal rules of happiness is always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual
The carrier who would be best positioned (at least in Europe) to offer a decent data roaming option due to their relationship with the German carrier of the same name, and who partially owns them, only provides the insane price of $15 per MB (yes, per megabyte) for international data roaming. For comparison, Verizon and AT&T provide 100 MB for $20...
"You'd think they'd offer some kind of optional secondary loan plan where you pay off a little bit every month"
Oh man. You deserve every bit of ridicule that comes your way.
Is not it the job of banks to lend money? Use your credit card to finance your purchase. If you have no financial credit and you don't have a credit card, why are you buying expensive gadgets?, buy a simple phone because obviously you should not be wasting money on them
The least expensive plan I can find is still $50 (at t-mobile)
The only way to go cheaper, is to add more lines.
As far as I can tell they've completely removed the option to select how many minutes you want per month.
The only option is unlimited.
It's probably because their website is so ridiculously hard to navigate.
Of course having competition requires good regulations.
Utterly wrong, and ignorant of the very definition of "competition". Usually regulation works to PREVENT competition by helping a large entity prevent smaller competitors from succeeding.
the Justice department hadn't successfully blocked AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile.
In that case it weakened the ability of T-Mobile and AT&T to compete well with Verizon. Healthy competition is not about the sheer quantity of competitors.
AT&T claims the cap on data use was a direct result of the merger being prevented. How did that regulatory action "help" AT&T customers?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
how does a site like /. get the fuckin' data numbers wrong?! 500GB? Yeah, that'd be awesome. 500MB... not so much.
And, T-Mobile supports IPv6.
I believe everyone can thank France's Free operator (http://www.free.fr/) for showing the way.
Nice of them to tell me they were going to do this last week when I renewed my contract.
This will set in motion for T-Mobile to be bought out by someone else so that the other carriers and their mandatory 2 year contracts don't look bad for consumers. Even if the FCC blocks ATT from buying out T-Mobile we'll see some other group that isn't currently a large player in mobile phone networks buy them out and re-institute 2 year contracts.
The carriers simply won't stand for this, even with T-Mobile being the smallest of the big carriers.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
My prepaid plan with T-Mobile is $30 for 100 minutes and all you can eat data with first 5 GB at 3G speeds. Doesn't look like this plan will survive, I'll have to pay more money for fewer bytes. Don't think I'll stick with T-Mobile.
Why is this?
Demand. Americans don't country-hop very much compared to Europeans.
Also, things have improved quite a bit. I'm currently on a T-Mobile prepay plan that gives me their sort-of-unlimited-but-they-throttle-the-speed-after-5GB data, unlimited texts, and a paltry 100 voice minutes for $30. My wife has their 1200 minutes or texts plan (but almost no data) for the same amount of money. Sure, I need to buy about $10-15 worth of additional minutes at 10 cents/minute, but it's still a big improvement over what I was paying for inferior service a few years ago. And if the information on the Orange UK website is representative, even the Europeans would find those plans attractive.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Is ending subsidization really going to appeal to the mass consuming public? How many teenagers have $650 for a new iPhone? You'd think they'd offer some kind of optional secondary loan plan where you pay off a little bit every month, or owe the whole amount if you want to change carriers.
I want to sell you a phone, but its going to be voice only interface, because of your stupid face not reading tfa.
So we have gone from not reading the fucking article, to, not enough bothering to read the fucking summary now? seriously if you can spend the time to type 2 sentences how about you spend 10 seconds at least reading the summary.
So now they have switched to having just one plan that costs $50/month. That's $600/year. If they think I'm going to pay them this much they are insane. Sure, there are all these phone junkies who are on the phone all the time and are able to use a web browser on a 3" screen, but for quite a few normal people a cell phone is kept mostly for emergencies. For now I apparently can still keep using my $10/year pay-as-you go plan, but if they make me switch, I'm leaving. Where? I have no idea.
I'm keeping an eye on this, and if it's for real, I may just have a new phone carrier!
I'm not particularly UNHAPPY with my cell carrier, but I really may just need to vote with my wallet.
The Digital Sorceress
Wah.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
So how many km (..... sorry miles ) on the BMW ?
1) You don't pay extra for voice mail and SMS on most networks. Maybe on some of the pre-pay small networks (who buy time for the bigger ones) but the plans these days seem to be all inclusive with those. Verizion, the company I'm with, only seems to have unlimited calls (to any number in the US at any time), and unlimited SMS. Also includes voicemail, 3-way calling, tethering, etc, etc. This is pretty standard near as I know.
2) Ireland is, as you say, a small country. It is just barely larger than West Virginia, which is the 41st state in size. The continental US is larger than the entirety of Europe. The plans we are talking about here offer calling, and roaming, around that entire area. What would it cost you to get a plan with unlimited calling (inbound and outbound, to all number) and roaming to Sweden, Spain, Germany, Italy, and so on?
I certainly won't say the US carriers are perfect, or even that good, but I think some of the people in the EU have a bit of a skewed view of just how large the US is and what area they are covering.
Can decide if this person should get down-voted for being an idiot, or up-voted to ensure the idiocy is on display and thoroughly mocked.
This signature is false.
i was initially excited when i heard the news. thinking i could get something like 200 voice minutes + unlimited data per month. then to read their offering is basically the opposite of what i want. I never use my minutes!!!
100 voice minutes/mo.
no texting.
no voicemail.
2gb/mo. internet/data
$20/mo
The base plan T-Mobile is touting is $50 per month for unlimited everything (500 MB data at 4G speed).
Wal-Mart sells a T-Mobile plan for $30 per month for unlimited text and data (5 GB data at 4G speed). The catch is that the plan has only 100 minutes of voice. But if you are willing to use Google Voice with Groove IP, you can use your data to talk. I have this setup and love it! Better still, if you're in WiFi range, you can stretch your WiFi even farther.
1) When my 2 years is up with AT&T this fall, can I take my AT&T iPhone 4S over to T-Mobile and use it there, since they both use SIMs?
2) How is T-Mobile's coverage in Orlando & the SF Bay Area? (Specifically, the Peninsula?)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
koodo?
ATT does not have a guaranteed price for the duration of the contract. While contract law would indicate so, it's a "they will change the terms of the contract prejudicially" sort of contract, in which you can, in theory, break the contract. However, they will keep billing you.
It sounds like T-mobile has the best purchasing experience. People shouldn't have to create a spreadsheet with a pivot table to find the best plan. Simple = good.
The problem with many carriers isn't the subsidy scam, but the confusion. The phone shows one price - but that is with plan X. But with plan Y it is a different price. Another phone shows the price including a mail-in rebate, but this one here has an instant rebate. They don't know how much the taxes are. This plan would be $A/month but you pay some amount for text messages, but this plan has unlimited text messages but is it worth it? What if I add my son to the plan?
There is no extra fee to use wifi calling on T-mobile.
So if you have a wifi network in your house you have already setup a call extender that can be used with T-mobile. It can be particularly nice if you travel outside of the US and want to call home. You get local US domestic rates.
Are you insane, or do just suck at math? Using a credit card to finance something means you end up paying crazy amounts of interest. You're far better using a line of credit or personal loan, or even (oh my goodness) actually saving up the money first.
Thoe plugs look like the behemoth German SchuKo plugs. But the beer looks a bit crap.
Have they yet received their Darwin Award?
Or maybe this is a Fraunhofer office party celebrating a new form of electricity that doesn't short in water? Or maybe they are bathing in distilled water(which could also be worthy of a Darwin Award)? Or very thin insulating full body suits?
There is only one level of stupidity in this picture but several other levels of potential genious!
The beer still looks crap.
20 minutes into the future
I'm holding my breath!
I don't think they support WiFi calling on phones they don't sell. It doesn't always work on modded phones either.
While I love T-Mobile I'm not sure I'd ever buy another phone from them. Their phones tend to be expensive (well, all the other major carriers are too). You can save quite a bit by buying from Google, or from some Asian supplier.
You're still on the hook to pay off the phone if you leave or it breaks or you lose it.
They do, and the down payment, monthly service charge and early termination works out to be about the same as the big carriers.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
* no visual voicemail
You do get vvm on prepaid as an actual T-Mobile customer. You don't get transcription IIRC. You can't use MyAccount. You can use top-up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I will never, EVER use Tmobile. EVER. (yes, disgruntled). I had to cancel early due to moving and having absolutely NO coverage in my new location. Suddently, the early termination fee more than doubled for each of our phones. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, was told the guy I'm talking to was one. When I asked to speak to his boss, was told he's not available, but his name was "Fred" I asked for the last name, was specifically told that "Fred" has no last name. I HATE Tmobile with a passion, and repeatedly hope they go out of business in shame.
T-Mobile will have the iPhone 5 for $579 not $650.
http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/151739-t-mobile-iphone-5-the-ultimate-american-iphone-and-cheaper-too
It's because our corporations pay many millions of dollars directly to the members of our government's legislative branch.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Wow, sounds almost exactly like what we have had in Finland for years now!
Seeing as how Wind Mobile is being sold, T-Mo should get into the Canadian market. It's logical, as Wind's towers use the same AWS spectrum as TMo (and largely, the same phone models). We need someone other than Robellus to buy Wind, to keep the market sane(ish).
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
You get the same hardware in JP and the EU, yet both allow you to buy the device and play SIM swapping games as you desire. The wireless service is cheap, and you have real pay as you go or pre-pay SIMs, which don't expire every 30 days. Why is this? Other than 'muricans are dim fucks that put up with any shit?
Mandating that all U.S. carriers use GSM was seen as "the government picking winners and losers" and therefore undesirable.
Instead, we let carriers lock in customers with incompatible hardware, making the corporations winners and their customers losers.
I just put my wife on one of their new plans. We went in there very confused about why we'd want to pay essentially full retail price for a GS3 when I could get one from somewhere else for a lot less (paid in $20 increments over several months). They explained that the new plan takes the cost of the phone out of the plan itself (like the article said) and included all the data, voice, text, AND FULL INSURANCE with it. Essentially saying you buy the phone from us outright and we'll make sure you get to keep it while you pay it all off. I thought it was truly brilliant for once.
unlimited calling to any US mobile number, which is the bulk of most calls people tend to make
Do you mean "US" is the bulk, or "mobile" is the bulk? You'd be surprised at how many households among my extended-family survey sample still have land lines. A lot of Slashdot users seem to think it's zero, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume that, especially if there are kids in the house who are legally too young to have a job to pay for their own cell phone, and especially now that a VOIP land line from magicJack is $3/mo or less if you already have high-speed Internet.
Customer signs up for service and selects an iPhone 5 or other expensive phone, so Tmo "finances" it for them. Customer then cancels their service and stops paying for the phone. How do they get the balance of what the customer owes them for the phone? It sounds like they're just getting creative about what they call their contracts and subsidies. If you can still get an iPhone without paying the full $650 up front, I'd say that's still a contract you're signing, just perhaps a contract shorter than 24 months.
Sure, one's productivity drops for a couple weeks while poking around in a newly discovered reference site of broad scope. It happened to me when I discovered Wikipedia over eleven years ago, and it happened to me when I discovered TV Tropes nearly six years ago, and it happened a third time just over a year ago with Cracked.com. But I thought this would have fallen off somewhat since then as more people have become familiar with what's on that wiki, just as it has fallen off for Wikipedia.
...they collect it the same way AT&T collects if you cancel your contract prematurely. They turn you over to a collection agency and screw your credit rating if you don't pay. I think the point is that once you pay off your phone, you're done, and your bill for service is(in theory) less than the phone-subsidizing competition. With AT&T, I'm paying for my subsidized phone forever.
I expect the manufacturers will hate this, as consumers will no longer be upgrading to "free" (subsidized) phones every two years. Not that that's a bad thing. When I got my iPhone, I crunched the numbers and a two year contract with AT&T worked out to be the best deal. But once that contract's up, I'll be looking hard at switching to a non-subsidizing service, assuming my phone is still working.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
It used to be that Visual Voicemail simply didn't work (you'd install their app, and it would say something like "can't connect") - and on their website, they explicitly had prepaid plans listed as not supporting this feature. This has changed sometime recently, though.
But you still can't set up Google Voice.
The no-contract plans do not allow voicemail forwarding - so if you currently use YouMail or an equivalent, you will be SOL by using T-Mobile.
I have already lived long enough to see lawsuits where unauthorized access to as little as a song invoked thousands of dollars in legal fees, while tax havens specifically crafted to avoid tax collections, operating in the Caribbean and Indonesian islands, continue to operate. This one-sided law is wearing heavily on my respect for law - its seeming more and more like organized muggery every day.
...
OH! Muggery...that's an m there...read something quite different at first.
Although come to think of it, in the context perhaps my initial mis-reading was more accurate...if not quite appropriate :o)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
This looks to me like a preview of good things to come after Masayoshi Son and Softbank acquire a controlling stake in Sprint, which will also buy out Clearwire. T-Mobile better grab some market share before Softbank arrives. (Son was the upstart in Japan in the early 2000's who make things there very competitive.)