T-Mobile to Simplify Phone Bills With Single Unlimited Data Plan and No Additional Fees

Data is powered by all of these.

 

Figured. There is always a catch.

 

Switched to TMo 2 years ago, was very skeptical due to past experiences with them and at the time being on the overpriced VZZ... never looked back. Data is as fast where I live (Salt Lake City, UT) and reception is just as good as VZZ and I save a lot of $$$ per year.

While TMo may not be the best for you, they are changing things up and that is a plus for ALL consumers, not just consumers that are on Tmo.

 

Water is recycled. I take a gallon of clean water from my tap, I return half a gallon of dirty water through the sewer or back into the ground, I evaporate half a gallon into the air, and I keep some tiny amount in my body until I die, at which point its returned into the ground or air. While clean water is finite at any given moment, the total amount of water on this planet does not change day to day, despite the use.

I'm limited by flow-rates when I buy water or gas as well. It's the same thing. It's also irrelevant to the point. I don't consume information by speed. Whether the NYT article takes 1 minute or 1 second to load doesn't matter - I want to read the article. Likewise it doesn't matter if I fill up my 3 gallon mop bucket at home slowly or through an industrial water line quickly - I want to mop my floor.

Do you require gas to survive? I need broadband for work, just like I need gas to get to work. No difference.

 

Mike Sievert said it best just now when he was asked if getting rid of the 2GB $50 Simple Choice plan was alienating the single line user. If you are on the $50 + tax plan, you're already at $60. If you go in Tmo 1 with $70 and use less than 2GB, you get the $10 KickBack and it ends up being $60 anyway.

 

T-Mobile is really giving the industry a kick where it counts. I paid for 6GB of data per month for 8 years and maybe used 0.2% of that, but it was too risky to change plans and then be hit by overage fees should I need the data, so I continued paying.... and paying... for what I barely used.

 

As a T-Mobile customer for the last couple years or so, I think there are a few things going on here.

First? Yes, they're "forcing you to buy an unlimited plan" now - but it sounds like they're also saying you're going to receive a $10 per month bill credit for each month you don't use more than 2GB of it. So there's that ....

Second? I have an iPhone on a plan with them by myself (no additional phones on the plan for the rest of the family), and by the time I pay the monthly fee for my iPhone 7 (0% interest, and payments made over 24 months of service), my bill is right at about $80/month, on a package where I only purchased 2GB per month of LTE data. If you subtract the portion that's going towards buying the phone, that's still around $56/month. And I get a corporate discount via my workplace, so it'd usually be another $6/month or something like that.

So essentially, taking them up on the $70/month unlimited plan, where you get $10 back for not exceeding 2GB of LTE usage, means you'd be paying less than $5/month more than I pay on the old plan where I never get more than 2GB of LTE per month. That sounds reasonable to me.

 

Terrible analogy.

Water is finite. Data is not.

 

Per T-Mobile:

I don't use anywhere near enough data, minutes, OR texts to need unlimited any of them. So why should I have to pay the same as someone who does?

I'm on TMo's $30 prepaid plan, and have been for years. I've been happier with them than I ever was with AT&T, but statements like this are utter BS. Not everyone needs or even wants unlimited everything, and I sure as hell don't think more than doubling my costs for services I'll never come close to using makes any sense at all. And the whole family plan being cheaper on a per customer basis pisses me off--not all of us have three or more other people to go in with on a monthly bill. I'd think about going postpaid at $40 a month, but $70 is ludicrous for what I'd use...that's why I left AT&T in the first place.

 

I swear this guy announces a new unified plan every two months.

 

This is not clear on International High speed Internet or per minute calls. They had International included but at 2G speeds and $.020 per minute calls (Except Europe high speed for a period of time) and Mexico and Canada included. I wish they had a totally transparent plan for International with high speed as well

 

Once you've accounted for the fact that it's rolled in all taxes and fees and the fact that's it's unlimited (essentially)? Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

 

and the rural coverage is terrible where I am.

They should put a bunch of their LTE upgrade money instead into building more towers for more basic coverage.

 

I just did the math against my AT&T bill and I pay the exact same amount as I would pay under T-Mobile's new plan.
Actually it's a dollar less, $139 for 3 lines on AT&T vs $140 for 3 lines on T-Mobile.
And my AT&T plan even comes with AT&T's phone insurance on two of the lines included in that $139 bill ($7.99 oer month for each covered line)

The only difference is the data allocation... Unlimited (T-Mo) vs. 15GB (AT&T).
Now considering I never use all of my data each month and always have rollover, I will consider the plans equivalent for the sake of actual usage.

So what it will boil down to, for me anyway is coverage.
And right now T-Mobile still doesn't have the coverage that AT&T has in the areas I need it.
T-Mobile is still largely 3G and even 2G in rural AZ.

 

agreed. how is this better than the $40 prepaid plan?

 

I'd have switched years ago if their coverage area was better. I live in NH about 90 minutes south of Canada. AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile don't have coverage up here. Verizon is the only one that does and it's only about half of my drive to work has 3G. the rest of the time, it's no service.

I'd love to switch to T-Mobile if they can increase coverage to be all of NH, VT and Maine.

 

What a move. Damn. Gonna be hard for other carriers to match this.

 

I will say that is really crazy! I have traveled all over the US and have been to Canada with my T-Mobile iPhone. It has worked great! No loss of signal except for a few miles across the US/Can border and it was only for a few minutes if that. They announced what the service would look like buy the end of the year, and if they achieve it, which I personally think they will, they will be way ahead of AT&T and literally trailing Verizon by a few hundred...

 

Since most users don't need or use unlimited data, I don't see this affecting other carriers much at all. Yes, I get the principle of it, but in practice the other carriers won't care much about this.

And just to clarify to make sure I'm understanding, for two lines, it's $120/month, 3 lines $140, 4 lines $160, 5 lines $180, etc etc... with no additional fees/taxes, correct?

 

Because unlike water and electricity, there's much less impact of wasted units of data.

--- Post Merged, Jan 5, 2017 ---

I personally would like to see an unlimited international calling and texting plan that you can buy for just the month. I hate having to worry about not using my phone overseas due to crazy $2/min or more charges.

 

The limited resource here isn't data, it's the ability to move it. A cell tower can only handle so many cell phones, or more accurately, bandwidth. If too many people are using the same towers then service and speed suffers. The only answer to this currently would be more towers to further distribute the load.

 

I've been on Sprint for nearly 7 years now, had T-Mobile for almost that many before the switch. At the time, Sprint had better coverage in far northern Utah than T-Mo did. I can't speak about the T-Mo coverage nowadays, but I'm getting sick of the spotty coverage I'm getting on Sprint. If I head any further south than Utah County, I barely have a signal. The only thing that's keeping me on Sprint is my unlimited plan and the fact that here in my cubicle, Sprint has the best coverage of all the providers.

How is your coverage outside of the SLC area?

 

Well since sound quality is directly proportional to compression rate (and because of that, file size) you can't deliver 256kbps audio and use any less than 256 kb per second.

 

Agreed. Just this last year T-Mobile has really changed how they have expanded on their plans for families and offering additional data that haven't cost anymore on the plan itself for overage.

 

"T-Mobile is also introducing a "KickBack" program, which will give customers a $10 bill credit for each phone line that uses 2GB of data or less starting on January 22."

damn thats genius