T-Mobile's revamped Pay as You Go plan offers a flat rate of $0.10/minute or message, adds data

[Himanshu Arora]

T-mobile announced yesterday that it will soon launch a simplified Pay as You Go plan that offers a flat rate for calls and texts, as well as the option to purchase 4G LTE data passes.

"Historically, Pay as You Go plans have been difficult to understand. The per minute/message amount customers paid, varied greatly on how much money customers preloaded. This made it tough to know how much a call would cost and when you needed to reload, so that your account would remain active", the carrier said in a press release. "Now that’s all changing".

The revamped PAYG plan requires you to shell out $3 a month, offering 30 minutes of talk or text messages at a fixed rate of $0.10 / minute or message, which, according to the company, is the lowest “pay as you go” offer in the industry, amongst major nationwide carriers. The plan, which is scheduled to launch Sunday, August 17, doesn’t require any contract, credit check or deposit.

This compares to the company's current PAYG system that requires you to spend anywhere between $0.10 to $0.33 per minute for talk, depending on one of four options. Also, the minutes expire if not used within a set time frame. Not to mention, you cannot add data to your plans.

Along with a simplified pay structure, the new plan also offers daily as well as weekly 4G LTE data passes, requiring you to shell out $5 for a 1-day, 500MB pass and $10 for a 7-day, 1GB pass.

The rate-plan shakeup comes just a few days after the company announced that it's become the top prepaid wireless service provider in the US with 15.6 million customers.

T-Mobile recently launched a slew of consumer-friendly “Uncarrier” announcements including paying early-termination fees, killing wireless contracts and overages, and more, forcing other big players to play catch-up. It'll be interesting to see how competitors respond to the latest move.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/57710-t-mobiles-revamped-pay-as-you-go-plan-offers-a-flat-rate-of-010-minute-or-message-adds-data.html

 

[oldikes]

I reread what it said several times and im still confused. is 3$ a flatfee and you add whatever you use to that?

also I find those data passes laughable...

 

[Guest]

So if you use your cell phone like a you would on any other plan from Verizon, Sprint, or Att, you'll likely end up with a similar bill. You can get 4 gigs of data in a month, and that will cost you 40 bucks. Then you'll likely end up using your phone for at least two hours per month, so add another 12 bucks on that, and how many texts are you going to use? Add another 20 bucks on that. You're still looking at a 60 to 80 dollar bill if you use your phone like anyone else does.

I guess you could possibly save some money if you had a really good strategy. Never answer phone calls, or make phone calls if possible. Use as little voice minutes as possible. Also, use a text messaging app instead of the texting on your phone so that it uses data instead of text charges. Then make sure that you don't use 3g/4g whenever you can, stick to your home wifi, or other wifi connections to do the bulk of your data usage.

If you don't do all this crap, you end up with a comparable bill to any other service out there. And if that's the case, why not just go with a plan and get unlimited data from Sprint and not have to worry about all the nonsense? I generally like where T-mobile is going, and how they approach things, but this pay as you go plan is bullsh*t.