Characterize however you want, the point is that the plan isn't practical for someone's primary phone. It is meant to compete with the disposable cell phone market.
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Carrier T-Mobile $30 Prepaid plan (100 min, unlimited text, 5GB of 4G LTE data)
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I reckon the plan was designed for folks who don't use their mobile phones daily. The old daily $3 for 30 days is $90/mo which is pretty expensive for just a single line. I reckon the daily plans are geared more towards those who only use their mobiles occasionally or for travelers who only need service for a short period.
Not anymore. As noted in my post from yesterday, the biggest change to T-Mobile's prepaid plan is actually how they restructured their pay-by-the-day options. The $3/day plan is no longer available (I assume anything activated prior to Saturday can still use that option for the time being), and they don't have any other daily unlimited voice options.
In its place, T-Mobile now has a $3/month prepaid plan that comes with 30 voice minutes. Texts cost $0.10 each, and voice calls over 30 minutes cost $0.10/minute. Data is now sold as a $5/day bloc of 500 MB, or a $10/week bloc of 1 GB.
"most people" != all people.
It's not a gimmick because not everybody uses a particular phone or line every day. When I was still on an AT&T prepaid feature phone, I hardly ever used up my voice minutes and might use the phone 5 days or so in any given month. When I activated that line, I started on a pay-per-day plan, but switched to a $25/90 days plan when that became available.
If you read the Howard Forums, there are also plenty of power users there who swap SIM cards or use multi-SIM phones. They might use the T-Mobile service when their voice minutes run low on a grandfathered unlimited data plan, or if they travel overseas and want to take advantage of T-Mobile's international roaming. A lot of them are absolutely livid that T-Mobile has eliminated the $3 unlimited daily voice plan.
Also, what you considered bloated bundles, are actually cost savings compared to what the a la carte pricing could be for typical users. Compared to the T-Mobile $30 plan, what unbundled cost structure would provide savings for consumers? How much would consumers pay per minute? Per MB? Would stuff like tethering also go to a per use fee? Would music streaming and international roaming also go by the wayside and revert to a fee per use basis?
Sure, most consumers never use up all their data and they know it. But, they also want to have it available when they need it. I don't think people are as clueless as you seem to think. It's the same reason why so many people pay more so they can get AT&T or Verizon's network. They might live and work in areas with strong T-Mobile coverage. But, they will pay more for those occasions where they might travel into outlying areas that T-Mobile's network does not reach.
Perhaps English isn't your first language if you're attempting to infer that my use of the term "Most People" somehow really meant "All People". You're basically making a frivolous counter-argument to something I clearly never asserted.
I'm glad you're happy with all of the additional bells and whistles that come with these plans but to suggest that everyone should be happy paying for them even though they're not utilizing them is ridiculous.
For the most part, my comments were talking about the sales practices of carriers in general and not necessarily criticizing this particular $30 plan from T-Mobile. Of all the available plans out there, it matches my needs the closest. I'm done with the 2 year contract nonsense of paying $70 or $80 a month and having to choose between unlimited voice or unlimited data.
Wow, pulling the ESL card ... mon dieu!
I made that point simply to highlight that what you think of as a "gimmick" is actually a valid and common use case, especially among people who use multiple devices.
If you're making the case against bundling, then that criticism by definition applies to the T-Mobile $30 plan as well. If you're saying that unused data or plan offerings is "waste," then that applies to the T-Mobile plan as well.
You're making the assumption that going to an a la carte pay-as-you-go model will automatically result in lower costs. And I'm asking what rates you expect to pay for this scenario to pencil out, and keep a company like T-Mobile from sinking into the red in the process. If AT&T and Verizon adopt pay-as-you-go, I would venture to guess that they would price it such that their revenues and profits remain as sky high as they are currently. Some consumers will pay less, other will pay more. But, everybody together will wind up paying about the same.
The costs of existing plans already assume that most consumers will not go all the way up to the limit on their plans, and if they did, the cost would be even higher because of the greater infrastructure requirements. It works the same way with home internet service, where ~95% of users don't hit their datacap. Are you suggesting that we go back to metered internet service for homes and businesses as well (like we had in the early dial-up era)?
Keep in mind that I'm on the $30 T-Mobile plan, because it matches my use case the best. If a plan does not offer value, then I don't buy in. Simple as that.
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I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet, but if you have an unlocked phone you can bring it over and get unlimited talk, text, and data (high speed 3g/4g LTE for the first 3gb I believe) for $45 from straight talk. That's what I do, and it's awesome.
Well, phooey. The tethering is now hard-capped at 100mb. I don't believe that was the case before.. that was one of the reasons I really loved the plan.
Tethering was never officially included with the $30 prepaid plan. Only postpaid plans are officially supposed to come with free tethering. The feature was quietly added to the prepaid plan last summer with no announcement, and I believe it has always had a 100 MB cap (based on what the T-Mobile app shows).
Before, tethering cost $15/month (pro-rated to your billing cycle) and you still have that paid option available. The paid tethering option lets you use your entire data allotment.
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I looked into Straight Talk, but their ~2.5 GB data cap just didn't cut it for my needs. Plus, I'd read about customers getting termination threats for using large chunks of data in a short time. If you don't need unlimited voice minutes, the T-Mobile plan costs less and gives you roughly double the high speed data (or more, since T-Mobile does not count music streaming against the data cap).
I had Straight Talk and they actually upped their data cap to 3GB. I heard they didn't do the threats anymore after the increase, but I could be wrong.
I gave up my $30 plan and converted this and my main phone to the two lines for $100. I was paying $70 for my main phone which was unlimited everything and now I have both lines unlimited everything for $100.
I like this deal and I LOVE T-Mobile!
I like this deal and I LOVE T-Mobile!
It's been upped to 3gb for a while. I'm constantly on my phone, I don't even have a laptop at this point for browsing because this is just quicker for me. I've been with ST for a while, never had a threat or anything like that. I like having unlimited everything so I don't have to keep track of things, and never have to worry about my bill changing.
use to have this $30 plan for 2 lines. While in the city is was outstanding, anywhere on the outskirts and during travel I got zero signal. If i did get signal it was not useable for anything. So i switched to cricket, they use att and i have signal everywhere. I will gladly take the speed hit to gain coverage.
The Cricket Smart plan goes for $50/month, which is a sizable jump in price for people don't need/want unlimited voice minutes. Plus, the speeds are capped at 8 Mbps for LTE and 4 Mbps for HSPA+.
It may be bad for you but here in Denver, it's the best carrier I have ever seen. AT&T and Verizon can't even get me LTE at my house, only T-Mobile can.
do you consistently get 8?
That's not that bad. I mean, on a smartphone, that is plenty.
is it 8 for both upload and download?
From what I've seen, most people generally hang around 8. Upload speed doesn't seem to be effected, I've seen many tests in the low-mid teens.