Sprint Bests Other Unlimited Plans With 'Simply Everything'

The wireless industry has been waiting for a response from Sprint to all the unlimited plans launched by its competitors last week. Well, now we have it. Today, Sprint announced what is essentially an "unlimited everything" plan for $99. And when they say everything, they mean everything. How will Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile respond to this?Sprint is offering just about every possible service it has all for the monthly cost of $99. What does that include? Try this on for size: Unlimited voice minutes, data usage, SMS messages, email, mobile Web, Sprint Music, Sprint TV, GPS applications and its DirectConnect services. The new plan is called Simply Everything, and will be available to both CDMA and iDEN subscribers beginning tomorrow, February 29.

Holy heck.

Sprint just undercut the competition by a wide margin. Both AT&T and Verizon Wireless announced unlimited voice plans, but their plans did not include anything else. If you want messaging or data, you have to tack on extra charges. T-Mobile one-upped Verizon Wireless and AT&T by including unlimited SMS, MMS and IM messaging as well. Sprint just beat them all.

So that leaves the question: What will the other carriers do? Will they alter their unlimited plans and start a pricing war? Will they respond at all? Sprint needs this advantage. The company is stumbling badly, as CEO Dan Hesse admitted to investors. He noted that, "To be frank, the issues we face are more difficult than what I expected to find."

There's no doubt that Sprint needs to turn things around. For Hesse to be so forthcoming on the problems faced by the nation's third-largest carrier is not good news. Sprint also announced it will stop paying dividends for the foreseeable future.

Time to sit back and see what the other carriers do.