T-Mobile Responds To Verizon By Improving Its Own Unlimited Data Plan (theverge.com)

It didn't take long for T-Mobile to respond to Verizon's recently announced unlimited data plans. T-Mobile's CEO John Legere announced two improvements to the carrier's T-Mobile One unlimited plan that both take effect this Friday, reports The Verge. "Beginning February 17th, the plan will include HD video, an upgrade to the 480p/DVD-quality 'optimizations' that are currently in place." From the report: The other change Legere announced is related to the hotspot feature of T-Mobile One, which lets you share your smartphone's data connection with other devices. As of Friday, the plan will let customers use up to 10GB of high-speed data each month for tethering. That matches Verizon's plan, which also allows for 10GB of LTE tethering. But again, prior to today, T-Mobile One only allowed 3G hotspot speeds unless you paid extra for the T-Mobile One Plus plan. Lastly, Legere announced a promotion that will offer two lines of T-Mobile One for $100. A two-line family plan usually costs $120 per month. Unlike other carriers, T-Mobile includes taxes and fees in its advertised price -- so that should be all you pay month to month. Verizon charges $140 (plus taxes and fees) for a two-line unlimited plan. Assuming there's no sneaky fine print or trickery here, T-Mobile has at least for now regained its feature-for-feature price advantage compared against Verizon Unlimited. The company also has a higher threshold (28GB versus Verizon's 22GB) before its users might experience reduced speeds when the network is congested. In a long series of tweets, John Legere announced the new improvements/promo and took several jabs at Big Red. In one tweet, Legere wrote: "... And we all know no one was falling for [Verizon's] 'you don't need unlimited' bullshit. Hey @verizon - your ads are still up..."

Comments

Competition

[p51d007]

THAT'S how it is suppose to work! Competition helps to spur better products.

Re:Competition

[BeauHD]

I agree 100%. It's great to see both companies take jabs at each other!

Re:Competition

[swb]

It does, but it seems annoying that all the BS about network reliability and fairness being behind cellular caps and throttling is so obviously dishonest when they expand their plan so quickly just to match a marketing trend.

If they had that much spare capacity to handle HD video and more data before, why did they wait to for Verizon before announcing it?

It's hard not to think they're all completely dishonest, the entire network except for a couple dozen towers is running at 20% utilization and they could jack caps to hundreds of gigs a month with no ill effects.

ATT Loses BIG TIME!

[BoRegardless]

I went over my ATT data limit & they throttled my data. So I visited their store last week and then upped my data allowed.

But I am still throttled most of the time on both cellphone and hotspot. Takes a long time to get a connection. Sometimes takes a minute to get something starting to load (looking at Mac's Activity Monitor.) Very often I'm limited to 20-40 KB/sec. ATT guys don't have an answer. Time to move to TMobile.

Re:Hotspot Plans

[mmell]

Well, they said they're doubling the hotspot cap from 5GB to 10GB.

I only bumped my head on the 5GB limit once - root the phone, edit one text file and *poof* - no more hotspot cap (not perfect, as they were able to detect and block traffic from my desktop web browser, but the useragent plugin for Chrome fixed that). Rooting my phone broke Google Pay, but that's turned out to be a pretty sterile tool anyhow. I haven't rooted my phone since I bought a Nexus 5, and won't unless I bump my head on the new cap some day.

Can I get some of whatever you're smoking?

[mmell]

So, how'd FOX spin this one. A response to the Bowling Green Massacre? Perhaps a response to those three million illegal immigrants that fraudulently voted? Muslim rape gangs roaming Europe's streets unopposed?

I could come up with more, but really - online, I can't watch your head asplode.