T-Mobile customers can now get 10GB of high-speed 4G LTE data plus unlimited calling and texting for each of four Family Plan users for a total of $120 under a special promotion that is available through Labor Day, Sept. 7.
The promotion, unveiled July 14, is part of T-Mobile’s latest Un-carrier Amped announcements, which offer new and existing customers targeted feature improvements for their mobile phone accounts. In the last two years, T-Mobile has unveiled a series of what it calls “Un-carrier” events that have ended mobile contracts for consumers, removed overage charges, created rollover data capabilities and more.
While the four-user $120 monthly plan is only available through Labor Day, T-Mobile also will offer the new 10GB-per-user plans to as few as two users per account for $100 per month. Each additional user, with their own 10GB package of 4G LTE data, will cost $20 more per month, according to the new plans. All users will also receive unlimited data, talk and text as well as other T-Mobile plan benefits, such as WiFi data and texting when traveling internationally in more than 120 countries at no extra charge, no data charges for music streaming, WiFi calling and texting, and a roll-over program for unused data each month.
“The way the big carriers offer shared data is just a scheme concocted to trick customers into overpaying or to slam them with overage fees,” John Legere, T-Mobile’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We’re bringing sanity to family plans and peace of mind to data-hungry families—because that’s what the Un-carrier does.”
Existing T-Mobile Simple Choice family plan members can switch to the new 10GB family offer starting July 15, and they can keep their plan as long as they stay on it, according to the company.
Earlier in July, T-Mobile announced that all calling, texting and 4G LTE data to and from Canada and Mexico will now be included for all customers who have Simple Choice mobile calling plans with the carrier. The no-extra-charge “Mobile without Borders” services begins July 15 for all T-Mobile customers, whether they are initiating or receiving any calls or texts between the United States, Canada and Mexico on their mobile phones, according to a July 9 announcement from the company. The move means that Simple Choice plans will now cover all of North America.
For customers, the new service means that they won’t have to pay more to use their mobile phones when traveling in or between the three countries. About 35 percent of all international calls and 55 percent of all international travel from the United States involved Mexico and Canada, which led to nearly $10 billion in global roaming charges at more than 90 percent margins for mobile carriers last year, according to T-Mobile.
The T-Mobile move comes at an interesting time, some five months after AT&T, one of T-Mobile’s major competitors, announced in January that it was acquiring the assets of Nextel Mexico for $1.88 billion. At the time, AT&T described the deal as a step in the creation of what it called “the first-ever North American Mobile Service area covering over 400 million consumers and businesses in Mexico and the United States.”
In a related announcement, T-Mobile said it has added 2.1 million new customers in the second quarter of 2015, which is the ninth consecutive quarter that it has added more than 1 million customers. The additions now give T-Mobile a total of about 58.9 million postpaid, prepaid and wholesale customers.
Through the start of 2015, T-Mobile has been introducing innovations to attract new customers and expand its business. In March, the company began offering new mobile services targeted directly at small and midsize businesses to bring them into T-Mobile’s ecosystem. At the same time, T-Mobile unveiled a new program aimed at consumers, starting with guaranteed rates forever and payments of up to $650 per line to buy out a new customer’s existing smartphone payment plan from either Verizon Wireless or AT&T.
In April, T-Mobile reported mixed financial results for the first quarter of 2015, with a 13.1 percent revenue increase to $7.78 billion from a year earlier, but a loss of $63 million. At the same time, the company reduced its customer churn rate to a record low rate of 1.3 percent.
The latest quarter’s results compare with the company’s fourth-quarter 2014 profit of $101 million and revenue of $8.15 billion.