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All change with mobile plans: after AT&T upgrades, T-Mobile & Sprint go ‘unlimited’

A woman talks on her phone as she walks past T-mobile and Sprint wireless stores in New York in this file photo from July 30, 2009. Sprint Corp is mulling a bid for T-Mobile US, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Files (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS TELECOMS)

Following the modest upgrades AT&T announced to its mobile plans yesterday, both T-Mobile and Sprint have hit back with new ‘unlimited’ plans.

T-Mobile has replaced all its plans with a single one called T-Mobile One.

It’s 100% unlimited and comes with unlimited talk and text and unlimited 4G LTE smartphone data – including unlimited standard definition video – all on America’s fastest 4G LTE network.  And, it’s available at a great price: just $40 per line for a family of four.

As with all carrier plans, there are some caveats in the small-print …

First, the headline rate of $40 per line applies only if you’re buying four lines for a total of $160/month. If you want a single line, that will cost you $70/month.

Second, Recode notes that video on the plan is capped at standard-definition quality – if you want to watch HD video, that will cost you an extra $25/month, so that headline rate of $40 more than doubles in price to $95/month.

Third, the company’s Binge On deal already gave unlimited SD video for many popular services, so the switch to all-you-can-eat data may not make much real-life difference.

Sprint is a little cheaper at $60/mo, but also limits not just video but also music and gaming to unspecified ‘optimized’ rates. A two-line deal is available for $100/mo, reducing the per-line cost to $50/mo, while each extra line costs $30/mo. There’s no add-on option available for faster video. As with T-Mobile and AT&T, both talk-time and texts are unlimited.

Both deals compare favorably to AT&T’s new plans for heavy data users. In particular, while AT&T claims to now have a ‘no overages’ policy, the small-print states that your data speed is reduced to just 2G speeds once you hit your limit – which may have nostalgia appeal for those who want to go back in time to a first-gen iPhone in 2007, but is otherwise worthless.

Photo: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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