# [News] T-Mo cutting off carrier subsidies



## Goose306 (Sep 12, 2011)

First off: I know this belongs in the T-Mo section of carrier discussion... however there is a grand total of 54 posts in that section since this site started. I figured posting this here may get some more lively discussion than it would there.

OK, with that being said did anyone else see the news yesterday?
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/12/in-risky-move-t-mobile-to-eliminate-mobile-handset-subsidies-entirely/

I'm not entirely surprised that the first carrier to make this move is T-Mo since they are European owned and its basically moving to the European model.

Do you think they will be successful?

Personally I believe that their monthly expected cost will still be too high. If their plan including 3GB of data is $60 that seems a bit high personally. While I get that it is cheaper than $100 Verizon plans, the simple fact is... who pays $100 a month for a single phone? Mine, while on a family plan, is still only ~50-60/mo with UNLIMITED data. Of course I'm in the minority nowadays as more people take subsidized upgrades, but the fact of the matter is people are still paying that amount.

I think they need to get it down to the rate of an MVNO to remain competitive at that point. PagePlus runs unlimited data plans @ $50/month, their cheapest data plan (I believe if I remember my girlfriend's properly) is $30/mo for 100mb (she hardly ever uses data and I put up lots of firewalls and bandwidth monitors to make it easy on her). PagePlus also runs on Verizon's network so they will get better overall coverage than T-Mo, even if its Verizon 3G.

It is my understanding that European prices, with currency exchange, basically comes out to ~roughly the rate of PagePlus? i.e. $50-unlimited data plans. I was actually told that in the UK with currency exchange unlimited data is roughly the same cost as Verizon was/is ($30) sim-unlocked and then you add-on your voice/text plan.


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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

http://news.ycombina...item?id=4883844

sums up most of what anyone might want to know.


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## blaineevans (Jul 11, 2011)

T-Mo and RIM should join forces.


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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Yeah, they make make T-RIM.


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