This morning, T-Mobile announced it would be dropping all of its current plans to adopt one unlimited plan. In a seven minute video, CEO John Legere talked about how carriers currently offer service by using “data plans”. He stated, “The era of the data plan is over.” After calling out At&t and Verizon for not having the capabilities of offering an unlimited plan, he announced T-Mobile One. This “one” plan supposedly offers unlimited talk, text, and 4G LTE data.
Unlimited talk, unlimited text, and unlimited data sounds too good to be true. Well, it is unlimited but with some drawbacks. Tethering is unlimited, but only at 2G speeds which is ridiculous. There is almost nothing that can be accomplished at 2G speed. If you want to take advantage of 4G LTE speeds then you’ll need to pay an extra $15 per 5GB. If you want to watch HD videos on “America’s fastest 4G LTE network”, you’ll need to cough up an additional $25 because videos stream at 480p by default. On top of all of that, if you use more than 26GB of data than you’ll be throttled for the rest of the month.
This has raised some red flags for some on the basis of Net Neutrality. The practice of throttling video unless you pay might cause some uproar from the community. T-Mobile’s Binge-On program has also been the center of discussion regarding net neutrality. We’ll just have to see how T-Mobile responds to these accusations.
One thing that stood out from the video was the lack of mentioning Sprint. John Legere mentioned At&t and Verizon and even bashed them for offering no unlimited plan, but there was no mention of Sprint. Sprint usually isn’t a topic that is mentioned by T-Mobile (except on Twitter).
Sprint also just released their newest unlimited plan, Unlimited Freedom. Looks like just another unlimited plan that looks very similar to something that they offered last year. It looks like friendly competition with some Twitter beef.
Finally, let’s break down pricing for T-Mobile One. One line starts at $70. Two lines is $120 with each additional line being $20/line. More than eight lines will cost you $30/line. Then add the HD video fee ($25) and the 4G LTE tethering fee ($15). The plan isn’t substantially cheaper than what T-Mobile currently offers.
T-Mobile One will be released September 6th for post pay and prepay will follow later. Customers that already have a plan can keep their plan or switch to the T-Mobile One plan. T-Mobile One looks very appealing at first, but once you read the fine print you realize what it really offers.
Author: Jessie Pelayo, Technology Consultant
