T-Mobile has officially launched their pricing plans that have been floating around under the names Project Dark or Project Black in the last few weeks. The pricing should be low enough to pull a number of people to their network. The rumor of the iPhone though, was, as I suspected, false.TmoNews has the scoop on the pricing. The plans start out at $49.99 for unlimited talking on a nationwide plan. For an extra $10, you also get unlimited text and for $20 more, you get unlimited data. The text price is the same they have offered for quite some time and the $20 data plan has also been available at one time or the other over the years, so it appears the big news is the unlimited minutes.

Verizon charges $99.99 for unlimited minutes as does AT&T, with data and text being on top of that. For $79.99, T-Mobile is offering unlimited minutes, text and data. Those prices with Verizon only get you 450 minutes. It seems the real deal here is for people that talk on the phone quite a bit. If you had the $79.99 plan at Verizon and you don't spend much time talking, then price isn't a compelling issue. If you do spend more than seven and a half hours a month using your cell, then T-Mobile's prices will be hard to beat.

If this is even moderately successful, and I don't see why it wouldn't be, we should see some similar price decreases from the other big carriers in the US. Head over to the TmoNews blog to see the full list of prices, including a number of family plans.