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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.
Compare T-Mobile plans including the new ones at Wirefly to see the difference.
I liberally use however much data/text/minutes I want on Ting (same networks as T-Mobile) and my bill is never more than $30.
Honestly these unlimited plans seem like massive overkill; especially for T-Mobile because they already give you the data for YouTube and several music streaming services for free. What are people doing on their phones and tablets that's using several GB per month?
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."
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Actually, given the trouble Comcast seems to cause (yes, the Blast tier is fast; but my T-Mobile seems to be more-reliable, with fewer stalls and faster downloads in general), I could see switching to T-Mobile as my primary ISP. I'm paying $80/month for Comcast, yet switching to 4GLTE on my phone causes Cyanogenmod updates and Spotify music downloads to come down 3-5 times faster than my 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac access point (an Asus RT-AC66U AT1750) supplies my OnePlus One.
$60 + $80 or just one straight $70/month bill? Even if T-Mobile charges an extra $30/month to allow tethering or whatever, it's still cheaper.
Until Comcast rolls out 2G Internet for $80/month anyway.
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Too late, it already states in the fine print that once you pass 26gb you get "de-prioritized" AKA throttled.
Granted, 26gb is pretty generous unless you're in the habit of streaming netflix on the go for 5 hours at a time (which T-Mobile already stated doesn't count against your data usage), but yeah, it means there's still something to reign in the data hogs. No longer will we see unlimited 3G usage through tethered Kindles.
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I think the lesson is don't think you can cut cute deals with big corporations where the "deal" isn't in a written contract signed by someone with officer-level signatory approval and backed by a surety bond.
The flunky who "agrees" to your terms just checking checkboxes in CRM that sign you up for whatever "deals" are in their system that day. When you finally discover your deal isn't in place (days, weeks, months, years) later, it won't really matter. They'll call you a liar, will claim the deal never existed and toss your debt to a collections agent.
You have more negotiating power caught with a pound of reefer by a dishonest cop on an abandoned stretch of highway at midnight than you do with a consumer-facing corporation.