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Print 14 comment(s) - last by ShaolinSoccer.. on Oct 27 at 11:55 PM
Unlimited plan with no contract costs $79.99 monthly

The mobile phone industry is very competitive with new plans by one company often matched by other major providers in a short period of time. When the first unlimited plans showed up, most other providers began offering their own unlimited plans as well.

Of the major wireless carriers, the smallest is T-Mobile. While the company is quietly cornering the market on cool Android handsets like the HTC Hero, it is still losing customers to smaller unlimited pre-paid carriers and larger carriers like Verizon and AT&T.

Reuters reports that T-Mobile has unveiled a new no-contract option for customers. The new unlimited no contract plan will cost users $79.99 per month for unlimited talk, web, and text messaging. The price is 20% less than what contract users pay, however, there is one significant tradeoff to go sans contract.

The mobile phones on the contract-free plan will cost more. Exactly how much more is unknown, but odds are the devices will sell for close to their full retail price. Subsidies often knock hundreds of dollars off the price of a mobile phone in exchange for a long-term contract.

The unlimited plan for those on a contract costs $99.99 per month, but the subsidies make the phones significantly cheaper. Many analysts had expected T-Mobile to offer an unlimited plan at only $50 per month reports Reuters.

"In our opinion, the new plans are more benign than investors' initial fears and could relieve some pressure on wireless stocks," Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen said in a research note.

Executives from Verizon told analysts on an earnings call that it did not feel compelled to offer a similar service to what T-Mobile has announced.

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Tethering
By Mitch101 on 10/27/2009 11:09:13 AM , Rating: 5
The problem I have with most of these unlimited plans is that they give you unlimited web but dont allow tethering. I wish I could manage my sites from the itsy bitsy web browser but I cant.

The second problem I have is the price. $80.00 a month.

Has anyone told them about Walmarts Phone Network which rides on Verizons network that offers the same unlimited for $45.00 a month?

http://straighttalk.com/




RE: Tethering
By ksherman on 10/27/2009 11:29:57 AM , Rating: 2
Sure that's not John McCain's network? ;-)


RE: Tethering
By JonnyBlaze on 10/27/2009 11:33:37 AM , Rating: 2
Their plan doesnt use Verizon. It uses TracFone. BIG difference.


RE: Tethering
By hcahwk19 on 10/27/2009 11:43:23 AM , Rating: 2
No, the plan uses Verizon's network. Straighttalk is a Tracfone service, but uses the Verizon Wireless network for coverage, which is by far the best of the major networks. I just got a phone for it yesterday to replace my ATT landline. For $30 a month, I will get 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and 30MB of data. I will probably upgrade to the $45 Unlimited everything plan next month once I have some time to test it all out. The phones for the system are pretty nice as well, and cheap. I got their newest phone, the Samsung R451C that has a full QWERTY keyboard, browser and email capabilities and MicroSD slot (for music) for $99. I will know more Thursday afternoon when ATT finalizes the number port to Straighttalk.


RE: Tethering
By mcnabney on 10/27/2009 12:21:18 PM , Rating: 2
Correction, it uses some Verizon resources. Not the whole network.


RE: Tethering
By Screwballl on 10/27/2009 1:51:40 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Their plan doesnt use Verizon. It uses TracFone. BIG difference.


Correction: any techie that has ever used Tracfone knows that their signals are borrowed from other companies. Look through the "Network signal" area in the menu and you see options for Any available, Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T and occasionally others like Sprint. The Tracfone base cell phone signal can use any of those providers if the tracfone towers are not found/available. For data, text and so on, they use the major providers networks. Considering most Tracfone users get it just for the base cell phone service and not data, text, SMS and so on, it is not widely known about the other service usage.

I have used several different phones, their cheapest have terrible signal/sound quality but the slightly higher end phones, especially the ones with the stub antenna have excellent signal coverage, even in remote areas of the US. I have taken trips to various areas around the country (in a car driving, a longer trip was Florida to South Dakota). Except for some remote areas of Arkansas, I have had a signal 99.9% of the places I have been to, and what especially impressed me was some of the areas where there is no signal for ANY of the other providers. I could go fishing at a remote pond or lake with friends, each of us have a different phone company and the tracfone would be the only one with a signal (including my Verizon phone which works well around town but poorly in remote areas).

This is also why we keep a charged Tracfone with us (with at least a few prepaid minutes) in case of emergency.


RE: Tethering
By chick0n on 10/27/2009 11:58:57 AM , Rating: 1
Just went to their site again and ... got errors.

I wouldn't use Any cell phone carrier that cant even get their site up and running right.


RE: Tethering
By ShaolinSoccer on 10/27/2009 11:55:52 PM , Rating: 2
Works fine in IE except for the link that shows where all the stores are. I tried using firefox and got errors.


nitpicky, but the htc hero is a sprint phone
By RamarC on 10/27/2009 11:36:15 AM , Rating: 2
the t-mobile mytouch is also an android, but it differs (slightly) from the htc branded hero in the united states.




RE: nitpicky, but the htc hero is a sprint phone
By Carl B on 10/27/2009 11:48:28 AM , Rating: 2
The Hero is simply a better phone as well; the MyTouch is based on the HTC Magic.


RE: nitpicky, but the htc hero is a sprint phone
By mcnabney on 10/27/2009 12:22:56 PM , Rating: 1
And this article is meaningless since Verizon is going to add several Android devices in early November. T-Mobile is chasing after Sprint in the race to irrelevancy.


By inperfectdarkness on 10/27/2009 1:08:26 PM , Rating: 2
perhaps. but do we REALLY want a world with only verizon and at&t?

do we really want a world with only intel, microsoft, wal-mart, etc?


By morgan12x on 10/27/2009 5:58:25 PM , Rating: 2
Personally I like my Sprint phone waaay better than my AT&T phone and it's cheaper for the same services. And here in the Texas Panhandle... you can't hardly buy an AT&T plan because most if it is not in a "home" area.


HTC Hero
By Raidin on 10/27/2009 9:45:54 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Of the major wireless carriers, the smallest is T-Mobile. While the company is quietly cornering the market on cool Android handsets like the HTC Hero...


The Hero is part of Sprint's lineup, not T-Mobile's. They do have the G1 and MyTouch 3G for Android phones, however. (Maybe more?)




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