“T-Mobile is changing how we think about carriers, there’s no doubt about that,” Nate Swanner reports for TNW. “But Uncarrier 12 — which brought us unlimited data — is like most of the company’s other moves: it’s smoke and mirrors.”
“The highlights of the latest move by T-Mobile are unlimited LTE data, talk and text as well as free roaming in Mexico and Canada. Individuals pay $70 per month, and those on a family plan pay $40 per line,” Swanner reports. “My problem with Uncarrier 12 is that these aren’t optional plans. Moving forward, all new and ‘upgrading’ customers will be pushed onto these plans. The plan also comes with unlimited tethering — at 2G speeds. That’s stone-age. If you want LTE tethering, you’ll have to pay an extra $15 per month.”
“And all that video you watch? It’s limited to 480p resolution, now. If you want 720, 1080 or 4K video, it’ll cost you another $25 per month,” Swanner reports. “The company calls it ’T-Mobile One,’ and the announcement video is ripe with John Legere’s typical bullshit. He says (emphasis mine) ‘you should have the freedom to just use your phone however the heck you want to use it.‘ Except it’s exactly what the plan prevents us from doing… If you want to get real, T-Mobile just turned $65 into $95 — or $110 if you tether.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: As always, read the fine print (and between the lines) of these carrier “deals.”
So, what’dya have for us, AT&T, Verizon, and – *gulp* – Sprint?
SEE ALSO:
T-Mobile kills data plans and goes all in on unlimited data – August 18, 2016
The TelCos are all in it to skin the cat every way they can so they can extract the maximum amount of money for the very least amount of service.
Welcome to the cartel of Wireless ISPs.
Make no mistake the TelCos are operating wireless dumb pipes just as the cable and wired TelCos are operating wired dumb pipes. They need to get the hell out of the way and compete on speed, reliability and data quantity per Dollar. You can buy a VoIP plan from any number of companies that will give you better and cheaper calling over the data network worldwide.
When we can opt out of Wireless TelCos carved up service and just buy data that is unrestricted as to use you will know that the market has been disrupted. This is just smoke and mirrors. Bullshit shined up and dressed in a Pink Trimmed Jacket.
Legere kinda looks like Eddy Cue’s long lost Pimp Brother.
The author of the story that is “recommended” is the actual idiot, not T-Mobile.
Christ, US plans are expensive! Here in the UK, with O2, I’m currently getting unlimited calls and texts and 10Gigs of 4G data (45MPS download, 10 up) for a little over £12 a month.
This is definitely the coolest cat CEO in wireless!!
Verizon and AT&T must hate this guy 😉
Curious if that’s the cost of the plan for a phone you own outright? Most plans in the US include a monthly fee or subsidized charge to pay for the phone, which often costs $400-600 and even up from there.
Ah yes, I own my phone outright
It’s a growing trend in the UK to buy your own phone outright and then pay for a monthly SIM-only service. Even if you buy an iPhone on credit, it still works out cheaper than a contract for 24 months.
I pay £7.50 ( less than $10 ) per month for unlimited texts and a pretty decent bundle of data and voice calls ( voice calls to other users on the same network are free and unlimited ). I never get to exceed the data or voice call limit, so the only extras I pay are for international calls. The data-only deal on our cellular iPads is just £5 per month.
One huge difference between the attitudes of US and UK mobile companies is that while US companies are always trying to trick you into paying more, some UK companies prefer to make sure that you get better value for money. I was previously on a more expensive deal and my network company sent me an e-mail saying that I would do better to switch to a cheaper arrangement. There is no on-going contract and I can change to another deal on-line in moments, or cancel at the end of any 30 day period. Even if I were to stop paying, I could still receive incoming calls for a further 90 days.
When we have friends visiting from overseas, we lend them an old iPhone with an even cheaper deal ( £5 per month ) so that they can make local calls and use the iPhone for navigation and web surfing around the UK. It costs far less than paying for data roaming with their own company and this bundle includes plenty of data for a visitor – much more than offered in many quite expensive data roaming packages.
I buy an unlocked iPhone whenever I feel that a need a new one and am able to benefit from the iPhone’s high second hand value when selling my old one. Therefore the total cost of ownership over the period of owning an iPhone can be very low.
There’s another thing that’s different in the UK. My bank ( and most other banks ) don’t charge me to withdraw my money from an ATM. When I was staying with friends in Arizona, they were amazed to see me withdraw dollars from their Wells Fargo ATM and for it to display a message saying that there would be no fee for dispensing the cash. They have their account with that bank and had to pay a fee every time they used that same machine.
my question is – are at&t, verizon or sprint’s plans better or worse? who has the best bang for your buck? i think t-mobile does. am i right?
I’ve had all 4 carriers and I finally settled with T-mobile. In the Los Angeles suburb where I live I actually get the best service with T-mobile. Sprint was the worst, Verizon too expensive with worse coverage and AT&T was so-so. I got in early on the unlimited plan (unlimited calls, texts and data) for $50/month. I bought my iPhone on eBay so I own it outright and I’m not tied to any contract. Contrary to this biased author, J. Lever has delivered for customers! I’m very happy with T-Mobile and not going anywhere!
Typo: John Legere not Lever
i love the losers complaining about this. first big complaint about is regarding tethering. cmon man! i don’t even use tethering. no issue for me. 2nd complaint is the resolution. your watching video on a small ass screen. why do you need 4K? complaining about not watching 4k on a 5inch screen is embarrassing. 480p is fine.
get off her tether horse you candy ass!
Also their current binge on plans run at 480P and you don’t hear complaints.
I get it. Your limited imagination can’t fathom why tethering and video resolution are important to people. But why brag about that and insult those who can understand this kind of thing? Just sit back in your cell and chew on your shoes or whatever. The rest of us will handle this.
your expectation is to be able to tether your computer to your phone for $70/month and have access to LTE speeds 24/7? thats a bit ridiculous – T-Mobile is offering a mobile plan – not a desktop plan.
Sooner or later (and probably sooner) there won’t be any difference in a mobile vs. desktop plan.
Google is looking to bring Google Fiber to Phoenix, AZ and some other areas… as wireless.
my current $70 plan which covers sufficient rollover data for both my iPhone and iPad will now cost me $90… so yeah, i’m definitely a “loser”
Thank you my Friend.
Before John Ledger’s Creativity & Foresight these Telcos had us by the Balls as to what kind of Devices we Purchase. They even Controlled how we use the Devices we Pay for, but now we have the Control in our hands and we can decide how we spend our hard earned Cash.
We should be very thankful that the T-Mo CEO had the Guts to go against status Quo.
Lets show some Gratitude instead of complaining like little Bitches.
Amen!
More Fluff and bluster. Like a bad phishing attempt.
Know how much I like to be screwed with? Zero percent. Also I can do math.
Hey T-Mobile, remember when I dropped ATT like a hot potato and switched to you? That road goes both ways.
Make it worth my while come September or you’ll be a faded memory by Halloween.
So, what is the speed, specifically, that you get with tethering?
I use Ting Cellular because I don’t need video 24/7 on my phone. You pay as you go. No voice this month, then $0 for that part. No data, then $0. They offer price break downs based on usage. As you use the services you will then move up to the next box of usage. I have a family plan with four phones on it. Two teenagers. My bill this past month was $65.
The teenagers are kept on a data quota. Once they hit it, they got nothin. They learn to use WiFi and make careful data decisions.
might as well just use a cheap flip phone
This is what happens with tiered data! People need to be pressing the FCC now so it doesn’t happen with our internet access as well in our homes!!
To be fair, if you gave unlimited tethering and 4k video people would be sucking down 500GB per month.
AT&T answer to MDN question is price increases and a garbage network. Verizon answer is price increase. US Telecom’s are garbage.
Complete hit piece. Spare me the righteous indignation that T-mobile will charge future customers additional for tethering as if AT&T hasn’t been doing that from day 1. And who NEEDS 4K video on their iPhone or iPad? Or even their laptop. Seriously? NEEDS. We should all suffer from bandwidth bottlenecks on everyday surfing and email so pretentious pricks like this author can claim their “experience” is degraded. Wha, wha, wha, cry me a river.
Of course, T-mobile’s super advantages over AT&T would scale back once their network and market share improved. But I trust that T-mobile will respond to customer groundswell about the changes unlike the unflappable monolith that is AT&T. And if they don’t, you vote with your dollars.
And as the author apparently already has T-mobile, what is he complaining about? He’d be grandfathered in.
Grandfathered in until they upgrade a phone. Upgrading pushes you into this plan.
Even though it is slang anyway, logically, the contraction “what’dya” should expand to “what would you”, which does not make any sense. You should have instead used “what d’ya” to expand “what do you”.
I can just see it now: the “Newark space” being up there with the “Oxford comma.” 🙂
The main difference I was pointing out was not the space, but the placement of the apostrophe that is meant to indicate omitted characters.
Everyone complaining about this is missing the part that these plans on,y go into effect September 6th. Plans enrolled into earlier will be maintained and grandfathered in.
Don’t like those future plans? Sign up with a plan that you like, now, and maintain it.
The current 4 lines for $160 is a great deal with 6GB of LTE and unlimited talk and text. Sign up with a corporate plan, and get 10GB instead of 6GB for even less money.
For all those bitchingband moaning in this thread – thinking doesn’t seem to be astringent point.