T-Mobile Goes Contract-Free

The imagined post-industrial wasteland, projected at the T-Mobile event, from which T-Mobile offers an escape.

"Please?stop the bullshit!" squealed T-Mobile CEO John Legere this morning. In introducing T-Mobile's new prepaid plans, he billed himself and his company as the "uncarrier," the anti-cellular company cellular company, one that's now doing away with contracts in favor of unlimited talk plans tiered according to data limits.

Wearing a T-Mobile T-shirt under a suit jacket and jeans, John Legere excitedly proclaimed his company's empathy for weary smartphone customers. "The industry's broken," he said, and in dire need of change. Legere offered his idea of that change in the form of T-Mobile's "value plans"?plans that seem prepaid but aren't. Instead, they're just simplified: Each comes with unlimited texts and minutes. (You can pay ahead of time, avoiding credit checks, but you won't get any subsidization on phones. Instead, you'd pay a downpayment on the phone and T-Mobile would tack on a monthly fee until you pay off the cost of the phone.)

Note that though Legere says the new plans come with "unlimited data," they don't. Data is still tiered: the company offers a choice of a 500 MB for $50, 2 GB for $60, and unlimited (with limited hotspot usage) for $70. Add new lines for $10 each.

Besides the possibility of going contract-free, the other news that got the bearded and hunched crowd to cheer was the $99 iPhone T-Mobile is now offering. (That, and John Legere's teasing as he tempted bloggers to flirt with his daughter?but what else would you expect from a cellphone event?). A small Apple crew showed up to give demos of the phone?which, Legere says, is better than the iPhone 5 everyone else has because it works on multiple bands (though it is, of course, the same iPhone 5 everyone else has). The company also introduced the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4?each for $99, too.

Making fun of AT&T was well-received, with cackles galore as CMO Andrew Sherrard held up the company's brochures, play-struggling to hold onto them all. "This is what we've been inspired by," he said. "We're here to change it all." All? That's a lot to promise, but it sure sounds good.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/tech-news/t-mobile-goes-contract-free-15268978?src=rss

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