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When it comes to carriers, wireless data has been turning into quite the commodity over the past few months. This is made no better evident than the amount of ways carriers are amending their policies, tightening up data use wherever they can.
T-Mobile — who pretty much introduced US consumers to “throttled unlimited data” — is once again restricting their customer’s data use, this time with new limits to roaming data usage. Come April 5th, customers will be allotted a smaller amount of data use while roaming that’s directly proportioned to their current plan. You can see via the leaked picture above, it ranges from 10 MB of on their lower 200MB plan, all the way up to 200MB of roaming data on a plan with 10GB or more.
The bright side? You wont be charged any overages, T-Mobile will simply cut off your roaming data once you hit your limit. By contrast, Sprint offers 300MB of roaming data with their truly unlimited plan before a customer rep will come to your door and give you the boot. While this news probably wont make the majority of consumers gasp, “How could they!?” I’m sure it will affect some of your decisions when shopping around for a carrier. No?
[TMoNews]
my Verizon unlimited data plan for my 3g and now 4g didnt change at all. even the price still the same :)
cool story bro
Can’t even remember the last time I was roaming so this is a non issue for me.
Grandfathered lucky people.
No one’s asked the big question yet:
Does this change come into play with our contracts. (See: Can I break my contract now & get a Galaxy Nexus?)
Since T-Mobile is combating churn aggressively I don’t think T-Mobile would make any moves that allow customers to leave with a termination fee waiver. More than likely your contract has no restrictions when it comes to voice roaming but data roaming is probably defined differently in your terms of service all together. In fact, I don’t think you are even guaranteed data roaming access. It’s just an additional perk. To get out of your contract T-Mobile would have to make a materially adverse change so I would assume even if this counted as on you would probably have to have been data roaming before.
You should just buy a GSM Galaxy Nexus and get on T-Mobile’s Value Plans which are discounted if you don’t get a phone subsidy. It’s a plan subsidy instead so it’s perfect if you buy your phone from somewhere else.
Value Plan x 24 months + full retail price of the phone
Is cheaper than:
Classic Plan x 24 months + discounted price of the phone
Plus HSPA+ 21/42 has better coverage nationwide than Verizon LTE.
Unless, like me, you have 5 phones on a family plan. In that case:
Value Plan x 24 months + full retail price for 5 phones
is WAY more expensive than:
Classic Plan x 24 months + discounted price of the phones
:-P
This is simply not true… do the math:
Value, unl talk, text, web (5GB) for five people:
$280. $280 x 24 months = $6,720
Classic Plan (5GB) for five people:
$340. $340 x 24 months = $8,160
So as you can see, the value plan saves you around $1,500 a contract and saves you even more if you just do the 2GB plan. Remember you would be paying the discounted price of the phone ON TOP of the $8,160 for the Classic.
But I pay half that for my five lines now. Granted, I only have 200MB data on three lines and no data on one. Adding the $50 to upgrade all to 5GB would still leave me at $210.
And the SGSII is $370/ea cheaper subsidized. $370 x 5 = $1,850.
As I actually have it:
5 lines – 2x Vibrants, 1x Blackberry, 2x Dumb flip phones. I got the Vibrants $25/ea (buy 1/get 1), when they were retailing for about $450/ea. The dumb phones were free. The blackberry was $60, retailed for about $400. I have 1500 minutes shared, unlimited text, 5GB data on the 3 smartphones, and no data on the dumb phones. I also have 2 Slacker Radio Subscriptions, and pay $205/mo. I’ll be a sad little man when this deal expires…
The thing is if you’re DATA roaming while being a T-Mobile customer the speed is probably going to be the pits anyway since the only regional provider which works with T-Mobile 3G/4G bands is Cincinnati Bell. Where as speeds on the T-Mobile network themselves are stellar.
Actually I think the cause of this is that T-Mobile is about to get a nationwide roaming agreement with At&t, as part of the break up fee, so anyone using an at&t phone on T-Mobile will access at&t HSPA+ while paying T-Mobile prices and I’m sure at&t will charge T-Mobile if one if their customers accesses data on their network. T-Mobile stated that there are at least 1 million unlocked iPhone users on T-Mobile USA perfectly happy with EDGE speeds… All those customers are about to be able to access 3G on their T-Mobile plan so it sounds like this policy is in place to apply to them.
Huh? IPhone no 1700mhz wtf??!!
Yeah but if they get nationwide UMTS roaming on at&t as stated in the break up fee then the iPhone would get at&t 3G on a T-Mobile plan. So, through at&t’s bands, not T-Mobile.
Really pushing that retention agenda… cutting data off completely.
This effects all data accounts. Even grandfathered ones.
boy does TMobile, have a very large set of ( you know ) I have a My Touch 4G and my brothers My Touch 4G and my husbands Sensation are all suppossed to be 4G’s but really only get 2G most of the time, 3G some of the time and 4G every once and a while. with 2 GB storage. These people are charging an arm and a leg for what we do have, and to get any more they want the other arm and leg, this really makes me mad ! so if there is a way to get out from under them I’m all for it. I would gladly got to another service provider. Everyone already knows they have the highest service plans around.
they are really doing a good job of getting people to leave, i guess people wasn’t leaving fast enough for them.