Krishna Baidya’s Random Musings

T-Mobile USA has launched a new unlimited mobile plan available to customers outside of a contract in a bid to compete with prepaid rivals such as Leap Wireless and MetroPCS.  The new plan will offer unlimited talk, text and Web surfing for US$79.99 a month to customers who do not want to sign up for a long-term contract, which typically lasts 2 years. Earlier this year (March) it started offering ” Unlimited Loyalty Plan”, unlimited minutes on an individual line for $49.99/ month and unlimited minutes on a two-line Family plan for $89.99/ month, to its customer who have been with the carrier for at least 22 months with a reliable payment history. Now, the company is believed to extend the $50/ month unlimited service for non-contract customers. The new deal represents a 20 percent discount on T-Mobile’s standard unlimited monthly fee for contract customers, though subscribers to the new deals will be required to pay a higher fee for a handset.

The introduction of unlimited monthly prepaid plans in the US was pioneered by Sprint subsidiary Boost Mobile, which launched a US$50 monthly plan in January. The plan has since been replicated by a number of its prepaid rivals and has led to a fierce price war in the prepaid low-end segment.

This is quite a bid to attract customer to its network and will not be surprising the beginning of a price war. As a end user, I am not complaining. Other broader implication is more subtle (but non-avoidable in my opinion) where mobile carrier too is following suit of ISPs in becoming nothing but a dumb pipe. It will be interesting to see how long more other operators across the world can wait before forced to accept this very fact.