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C Spire Launching iPhone on November 11th, 'Unlimited' Non-Streaming Data and 500 Minutes for $50

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MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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30,730



Regional U.S. carrier C Spire garnered headlines last month for its announcement that it would begin offering the iPhone 4S in the coming weeks, becoming the fourth U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone and coming ahead of several other larger carriers, most notably T-Mobile USA.

c_spire_iphone_4s_pre_registration.jpg



C Spire has now confirmed that it will launch both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 on November 11th, alongside the iPhone 4S debut in fifteen other countries. Device pricing is in line with other U.S. carriers, and C Spire is taking pre-registrations beginning today.
iPhone 4S will be available starting at $199.99 for the 16GB model, $299.99 for the 32GB model and $399.99 for the 64GB model with a new two-year contract and data plan. In addition, the iPhone 4 8GB model is available for $99.99, also with a new two-year contract and data plan. iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 will be available at C Spire Wireless retail stores, online at www.cspire.com/iPhone and through the Telesales group at 1-855-CSPIRE4. C Spire customers can pre-register for iPhone beginning today at www.cspire.com/iPhone.
Click to expand...
Most notably, C Spire will be undercutting service plan prices from the major U.S. carriers in some regards, with a low-end $50/month plan offering 500 minutes, unlimited SMS, and "unlimited" data. That $50 plan and a $70 plan also offering unlimited calling do, however, carry an interesting restriction that will not allow customers to "stream" data.

c_spire_iphone_pricing.jpg



Additional details on C Spire's streaming policies are available on its plan description pages, which note that the company typically offers 30 minutes of free streaming of "videos, music and game broadcasts" in each 30-day billing cycle, although unlimited streaming is currently free through the end of the year. Unlimited streaming access is available as an add-on for $30 per billing cycle, or separate streaming passes can be purchased for $5 (two hours), $10 (five hours), or $30 (unlimited for 30 days) as needed.

C Spire Wireless is based in Ridgeland, Mississippi and focuses its service on Mississippi, parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, and the Memphis, Tennessee and Rome, Georgia areas. The carrier has approximately 875,000 customers and operates a CDMA network utilizing the same technology as Verizon and Sprint.

Article Link: C Spire Launching iPhone on November 11th, 'Unlimited' Non-Streaming Data and 500 Minutes for $50
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/01/c-spire-launching-iphone-on-november-11th-unlimited-non-streaming-data-and-500-minutes-for-50/
Corrode

Corrode

macrumors 65816
Dec 26, 2008
1,003
2,297
Calgary, AB
Streaming restrictions? Give me a break. Data should be data.

And while we're on the same topic, minutes should be minutes. None of this daytime/evenings at 6pm garbage. These cell phone companies will do so many dumb things to make an extra buck.
 
F

FrizzleFryBen

macrumors 6502
Dec 14, 2009
453
179
Charlotte, NC
I have to have my streaming, but I can see for those who don't use it often, this is a great way to save some cash. Boy these plans are getting complicated!
 
M

MacDarcy

macrumors 65816
Jul 21, 2011
1,011
819
No streaming???? LOL.

Thats like...."Here, take these keys to a brand new Porsche....its yours. But um....it has no wheels."

DOH!

What a rip off.
 
bushido

bushido

Suspended
Mar 26, 2008
8,070
2,755
Germany
MacDarcy said:
No streaming???? LOL.

Thats like...."Here, take these keys to a brand new Porsche....its yours. But um....it has no wheels."

DOH!

What a rip off.
Click to expand...

yet people will buy it, just like people in the US keep buying our BMW & Audi powerhorses and yet they have no "Autobahn" to actually use that engine :D
 
aristotle

aristotle

macrumors 68000
Mar 13, 2007
1,768
5
Canada
MacDarcy said:
No streaming???? LOL.

Thats like...."Here, take these keys to a brand new Porsche....its yours. But um....it has no wheels."

DOH!

What a rip off.
Click to expand...
No streaming on the cheaper "unlimited" plans. Were you planning on paying an unlimited amount of money for unlimited service?

They offer a more expensive unlimited data with streaming included.

The thing about streaming is that it is a constant stream of bits which puts a sustained load on the network and adds up very quickly.
 
miloblithe

miloblithe

macrumors 68020
Nov 14, 2003
2,072
28
Washington, DC
That sounds perfect and entirely reasonable to me. Data-intensive streaming is pretty much something I only want to do at home. While out, I want much less data intensive stuff.

I wish AT&T would pick up on this idea. Of course, that's pretty unlikely.
 
azentropy

azentropy

macrumors 601
Jul 19, 2002
4,021
5,380
Surprise
MacDarcy said:
No streaming???? LOL.

Thats like...."Here, take these keys to a brand new Porsche....its yours. But um....it has no wheels."

DOH!

What a rip off.
Click to expand...

Yeah that is ridiculous - like if you couldn't use data and voice at the same time... wait a minute...
 
guzhogi

guzhogi

macrumors 68040
Aug 31, 2003
3,735
1,824
Wherever my feet take me…
Anyone know how they tell the difference between streaming and just downloading a really big file?

Also, why does this regional service get it before T-Mobile, which a lot bigger?

Corrode said:
And while we're on the same topic, minutes should be minutes. None of this daytime/evenings at 6pm garbage. These cell phone companies will do so many dumb things to make an extra buck.
Click to expand...

I don't know their internal decision making, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say telcos use night/day minutes due to usage. Since most people would probably talk more during the night than the day, nights probably use more bandwidth. So telcos probably try to spread the call time evenly over the entire day rather than have huge spikes. That's my theory, feel free to (respectfully) correct me.
 
S

samsandy

macrumors member
Sep 28, 2011
64
0
New Zealand
I wish i lived in the US that isnt fair our most expensive plan is $150NZD ($120USD) and we only get 1000 MIN 2500Texts and 500MB of data
 
S

SFJon

macrumors newbie
Jul 20, 2008
27
0
If I connect to my VPN and then stream, does C Spire notice the difference? Seems an easy work-around.
 
C

chalpin

macrumors newbie
May 27, 2009
20
0
Another question about streaming

So the non-streaming plans allow you to download a large movie to your phone but they do not allow you to stream a 2Mb song?

Or do they count on Apple's 20MB download limit to slow down the downloads? Of course this limit doesn't apply to jailbreakers...
 
P

pika2000

Suspended
Jun 22, 2007
5,587
4,902
guzhogi said:
Also, why does this regional service get it before T-Mobile, which a lot bigger?
Click to expand...
This regional carrier uses CDMA, where Apple already have a device for (the CDMA iPhone 4/4s). T-Mobile's 3G uses AWS, a frequency that Apple doesn't support on the GSM iPhones. To support T-Mobile, Apple would have to use a penta-band HSDPA chip, which so far only exists on Nokia phones and the upcoming Galaxy Nexus.
 
johncrab

johncrab

macrumors 6502
Aug 11, 2011
341
0
Scottsdale, AZ
"Unlimited data" but in the same sentence they say they're going to limit data. How cheesy. So that bare bones plan ends up costing significantly more than my robust AT&T plan even after all of the taxes are added to my bill. Nice marketing, guys. Please step out in front of a bus any time you like.
 
R

Rhalliwell1

macrumors 6502a
May 22, 2008
588
1
£10 get me £30 worth of credit.
£5/month for 5000 text bundle, £2/week for 500mb data and the rest is on minutes at 10p/minute.

Damn you guys over the pond get bad deals. I see why so many of you hate these large corporations.
 
D

DaveGee

macrumors 6502a
Jul 25, 2001
677
2
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

This carrier is pretty amazing... While considering streaming different from data is a tad questionable. BUT it does the right thing when it comes to options that do include streaming AND they let you opt into the extra 30 streaming on a month to month basis.

How unwirelesscarrier of them... :)
 
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