Just this morning, AT&T announced their upcoming shared data plans that will begin rolling out to customers in August. This is an obvious competitive move toward Verizon’s newly released shared data plan offering, and both wield similar pricing.
This evening, T-Mobile‘s Director of Product Marketing Harry Thomas released a statement on the AT&T’s new data plan offerings, calling them costly, complicated, and punitive. He believes that this will only confuse customers even more, and will only help AT&T take more money out of their wallets.
“Unlike AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile does not plan on introducing shared family data plans and believes consumers will not benefit from that model. AT&T and Verizon shared family plans are:
· COSTLY – AT&T and Verizon are charging more for what consumers want by raising rates on data, but promoting the “value†by pointing to unlimited talk and text even though today many consumers use less of these services.
· COMPLICATED – both plans force customers to share data when many customers don’t know how much data they’re using, which makes it hard to stay within their limit when trying to balance multiple users.
· PUNITIVE – At the same time that AT&T and Verizon are making it harder for customers to manage overages, they are also charging overage rates of $15/GB for accounts with at least one smartphone.Conversely, at T-Mobile we believe that:
· Customers who pay more, should get more – Rather than having to account for each device on a shared family data plan, T-Mobile customers can use their existing data plan to power multiple devices, while still saving hundreds of dollars annually.
· Data should be worry-free – With T-Mobile’s unlimited data plans, there is no surprise data cap or bill shock.
· Data plans should be flexible and affordable – At T-Mobile, customers have the option of only paying for the amount of data each member of the family believes they will need.†– Harry Thomas for T-Mobile
I actually agree 100% with Harry Thomas, as Verizon and AT&T are trying to make customers think that they are getting a good deal with unlimited talk&text. But lets face it: talk is becoming less and less popular, and text is starting to vanish with Google Talk and iMessage. 4G LTE has begun its rollout, so it’s only a matter of time before people are going to start to use more and more data.
What are your thoughts on Harry Thomas’s statement?
Source: TMoNews
