Target announces Brightspot, their prepaid wireless service on T-Mobile
On Monday we learned that T-Mobile would be doing away with Classic Plans at 3rd party retailers like Target and Walmart. To help the national retailer further compete against WalMart’s Straight Talk wireless service, Target is announcing their all new Brightspot pre-paid phone service. Operating on T-Mobile’s network, the plans are simple. Let’s pit them against, Straight Talk, and even T-Mobile to see how much value Brightspot offers.
- $35 unlimited talk/text (no data)
- $50 unlimited talk/text, and 1GB of “high-speed” data
- $65 unlimited talk/text, and 4GB of “high-speed” data
- $45 unlimited talk/text, and 2.5GB of “high-speed” data (AT&T 4G LTE, or T-Mobile HSPA+)
- $50 unlimited talk/text, and 500MB of data
- $60 unlimited talk/text, and 2.5GB of data
- $70 unlimited talk/text, and data
For those keeping score, Brightspot’s data plan is about $5 more than Straight Talk, but even with T-Mobile’s lowest offering of which Brightspot gives you 500MB of extra data. Target also hopes to sweeten the deal by offering customers a $25 Target giftcard for every 6 months of service which, in theory, could bring down that monthly bill by nother $4 if you’re already a frequent shopper. As usual, Target’s REDcard members also receive 5% off their cellphone service, so that’s something to consider as well.
All-in-all, it seems like Brightspot is only for the very light smartphone user, and probably only a good idea for the soccer moms and Joe Schmoes. More active Android users, will be better off spending their money elsewhere.