For two years, T-Mobile US has been trying to change the rules of the wireless world with incentives aimed at winning new customers and stealing others away from the nation?s top three wireless carriers.
Wednesday, at an event in New York, Bellevue-based T-Mobile announced it is now aiming its ?Un-carrier? mantra toward the business world in what it calls its ninth Un-carrier move.
?Un-carrier for Business,? a simplified pricing plan for business customers, starts Sunday. The plans cost $16 a line for 10 to 19 lines, $15 for 20 to 1,000 lines and $10 a line beyond 1,000 lines.
The plans include unlimited calling and texting and up to 1 gigabyte of data. Each line can add two more GBs for $10 a month, or upgrade to unlimited data for $30 a month. There is also an option for companies to pool their data and buy data plans ranging from 100 GB starting at $475 a month to 1 TB for $4,250 a month.
For any business line with 3 GB of data or more, T-Mobile also is including a free website domain through GoDaddy and a free email address powered by Microsoft Office 365.
?We are not just setting up your business with wireless ? we?re setting you up to do business,? Mike Sievert, chief operating officer if T-Mobile, said in a statement.
T-Mobile also created a Business Family Discount program, which allows a company-paid line to be the first line on a family plan. That translates into up to 50 percent savings on a Simple Choice family plan, because the first line of a family plan is the most expensive, the company said.
Also during Wednesdays event, T-Mobile announced ?Carrier Freedom? and the ?Un-contract.?
Now that Verizon Wireless has its Edge plan and AT&T has Next, customers do not need to get out of a contract to switch carriers because those plans do not have contracts, but the plans make use of equipment installment plans and leases to purchase a device.
T-Mobile?s ?Carrier Freedom? service, which begins Sunday, is similar to the contract freedom initiative the company announced in 2014. ?Carrier Freedom? will cover all outstanding phone and tablet payments up to $650 per line when customers switch to T-Mobile.
With the ?Un-contract,? T-Mobile says it is putting an end to price uncertainty ? promising that while a customers prices may go down, they won?t go up.
Customers on existing Simple Choice plans ? such as T-Mobile?s four lines for $100 with up to 10 GB of data ? can keep that plan for as long as they are a T-Mobile customer and the price will not go up.
Additionally, if a customer has an unlimited data plan, T-Mobile is locking in that price for a minimum of two years.
Last year, the Un-carrier moved helped T-Mobile net 8.3 million additional customers. While the company is still the fourth largest wireless carrier behind A&T, Verizon and Sprint, CEO John Legere has said T-Mobile will surpass Sprint this year.
It takes a lot of capital to builds out a network ? to buy spectrum and put in towers ? but once that is done, the cost of doing business is largely fixed.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile stock closed up 19 cents, or 0.58 percent, at $32.86.
Source: (TNS)
