The T-Mobile UNcarrier plans that were outed last week and over the weekend are now live, although it won’t be formerly announced until tomorrow. It appears they are calling it Simple Choice, and it gives consumers the choice of buying a phone at full retail and paying a lower monthly rate for service. Full retail generally costs $500 to $700, but T-Mobile will let you make a down payment of around $99 and pay off the remaining portion as part of a monthly payment of between $15 and $25. Isn’t this a reverse way of subsidizing a phone?
The best bang for the buck appears to be the unlimited talk, text, and 500MB of data for $50 per month. This one will be for those that aren’t data hungry as you will get throttled after 500MB, but tethering is included as well. If you need more data, you can just buy it in increments of 2GB (up to 12GB) for $10 extra per month. Things get a little complicated with the unlimited no throttling plan in that you can get unlimited talk, text, and data (no throttling) for $70. Sounds like a deal, but only 500MB of tethering data is included. If you need more data for tethering, you can buy the same 2GB increments for $10 per month.
It seems a little complicated, but I guess it comes down to if you really need tethering or not and if you really need unlimited. One one hand, you can get unlimited, talk, and 2.5GB of data (and tethering) for $60 or you can get unlimited, talk, data, and 2.5GB of tethering for $80. If you think you can live with 6.5GB, but you really need to utilize tethering, you could get the throttled plan for the same $80. You will be capped at 6.5GB, but you will get more data for tethering. Carriers just love giving you choices and complicating things at the same time don’t they?
Come comment on this article: T-Mobile’s UNcarrier Simple Choice no-contract plans now live