T-Mobile recently announced a new set of prepaid plans entitled “Simply Prepaid” that I find simply disappointing. T-Mobile claims their goal here was to try and make their plans as straight forward as they are “affordable,” with a focus on “simplicity, fairness, and value.” While they may be straightforward, affordable some may say is a whole different story.
I’ve been a big T-Mobile fan for a while now, and am a subscriber and supporter of one of their hidden and largely unpromoted plans, but exactly what they are trying to accomplish here is for the most part a mystery to me. Before we dissect things we need to outline just exactly what they have announced. All of their new prepaid plans include unlimited talk, text and data, but with varying amounts of 4G LTE data. The plans are available at 3 different price points that include either 1GB, 3GB, or 5GB of 4G LTE for $40, $50, and $60 respectively.
If you take a quick look around BestMVNO or dig a little deeper into T-Mobiles own website you’d have to ask yourself “just exactly how are these new plans a good value?” You see, if T-mobile really wanted to impress with great value plans, I think they should’ve expanded on the plan I use, the $30 a month for unlimited text and data that includes 5 GB of 4G LTE and 100 minutes of talk. Why not add more LTE data and talk at various price points? You have to pay twice as much with these new prepaid plans for the same amount of high speed data I get. To top it off, for twice as much you’re not even getting the same speed of high-speed data. These new plans limit and throttle your download speeds to 8 Mbps whereas the $30, 5 GB LTE data plan does not throttle anything. In fact a recent speedtest I did yielded download speeds of 21+ Mbps and upload at 10+ Mbps for me. Music Freedom and tethering are not included in these new plans either, however, with the $30 plan you get 100 Mb of tethering which makes that plan an even better value still compared to the new offerings.
T-mobile’s own Simple Starter plan (no longer offered) provides an even better value than these new prepaid offerings. $45 a month will get you 2 GB of unthrottled LTE data with unlimited talk and text as well as tethering. If you and a partner are sharing a plan you can get unlimited unthrottled data, with unlimited talk and text for $100 a month. So who exactly are these new plans aimed at and benefiting? For starters, we know with prepaid plans, a credit check is not required, so that helps some people out. On top of that, with throttled LTE download speeds of 8 Mbps it would seem that T-Mobile is trying to directly compete against ATT’s Cricket plans. These new prepaid plans do include roaming, which is something the hidden $30 plan does not, so that could benefit some. Overall though, if you take a quick look around my T-Mobile MVNO page you’ll see that Simply Prepaid simply does not make sense from a value standpoint when compared to other T-Mobile MVNO prepaid wireless brands. For these reasons, I think these new plans are simply #dataweak.