T-Mobile Phones, Plans & Unlimited Coverage: Mobile Company's Sustainability Questioned Amid New Data Rollover Offer
In its ever-persistent attempts to win over subscribers from other carriers, T-Mobile has announced they are bringing new value and meaning to the term "rollover."
T-Mobile announced they will be allowing customers to rollover your data, which tends to be the most expensive part of any wireless provider plan.
John Legere, CEO of the "uncarrier" T-Mobile, commented on the new initiative in a T-Mobile press release.
"Can you imagine your gas station siphoning unused gas from your car each month?" he said. "The U.S. wireless industry is even worse, Americans have been gamed by the carriers into buying huge data plans -- all to avoid getting screwed with overage penalties. Only to find out they bought more than they need, which is then confiscated by the carrier. For the consumer it's lose, lose."
The rollover plan will be available to customers who have purchased 3GB or more of high-speed (4G LTE) data plans for their devices, as well as those who have purchased 1GB or more for their tablets. While this plan already sounds too good to be true, T-Mobile is topping it off by offering an incentive of 10GB of additional LTE data free of charge.
According to Legere, the cellular industry robs customers of about $50 billion of unused data every year, on top of the $1.5 billion collected in overage charges alone.
The rollover data plan is just one of many policies that T-Mobile is pushing in attempt to win new subscribers. The company also did away completely with data overage charges and will simply throttle data if you go past your limit of use.
While these plans sound great to the consumer, some analysts are concerned.
"I continue to be concerned about the long-term sustainability of all T-Mobile's moves because they haven't been hugely profitable and are giving lots of stuff away," Jan Dawson, an independent telecom analyst for Jackdaw Research told the The New York Times. "At some point, they've got to be able to rely on their network and their service as differentiators, rather than just more and more giveaways."
Still, at this time these T-Mobile giveaways are full speed ahead, and remember T-Mobile is still paying early cancellation fees if customers switch their number over to them, trade in their current phone, and buy a new one.