T-Mobile Brings Back Unlimited Data For All (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader shares a CNET report: T-Mobile is eliminating data plans for new customers -- and for current ones who opt in. The company is getting rid of all its wireless data plans and instead offering new customers one unlimited plan, T-Mobile said Thursday. Under the new plan, everyone will get unlimited talk, text and high-speed 4G LTE data. The company has also changed prices for unlimited. The first line will be $70 a month, the second line will cost $50 a month and additional lines will be $20 a month for up to eight lines with auto-pay turned on. The price is $5 more a month without auto-pay. For a family of four, the new plans will cost $40 a month per person. While this plan will benefit those looking for unlimited, it will cost more for people who have been subscribed to the lowest data plans. The current plan starts at $50 for 2GB of data per month. This means individual customers on its new plans will pay $20 more a month. But the new price is lower than the cost of unlimited right now. Today, T-Mobile customers who want unlimited pay $95 a month for an individual line.
Compare T-Mobile plans including the new ones at Wirefly to see the difference.

Comments

Re:Is it real unlimited?

[kamapuaa]

I'm on T-Mobile unlimited, and I use 5-15 GB of data/month, and never get throttled. The fine print actually says " Customers who use more than 26GB of data in a bill cycle will have their data usage de-prioritized compared to other customers for that bill cycle at locations and times when competing network demands occur, resulting in relatively slower speeds."

Re:What about so-called "data hogs"?

[squiggleslash]

They're handling it in multiple ways, many of which will not be popular amongst Slashdotters.

1. Tethering is throttled to 64kbps. You can buy "High speed data" for tethering at 5G for $15. This is a monthly add-on.
2. Binge-on is permanently switched on. You can switch it off for $25 per month.
3. T-Mobile has agreements with most of the streaming audio suppliers (Google Play Music, Rhapsody, etc) which presumably restricts how much bandwidth those can use too.

Essentially this is the logical extension of Binge On - they've throttled everything that might cause a problem, some usefully (no problem with 480p video), some terribly (is there any point in tethering at those speeds), and so there's no real reason to track the rest of your data usage.

Finally:

4. If you still manage to be a heavy user, they will "de-prioritize" you at peak periods. You'll still get full service at 3am in the morning, it's just if you use your device when lots of other people are, their devices will be given priority.

No problems with that. Seems fair to me.