T-Mobile Targets Prepaid Competition With New Data Plans

Smartphones are expensive. Monthly plans typically start at $70 ($40 for voice service and $30 for data). That's before a messaging plan is added and often requires a two-year contract. The prepaid providers, such as MetroPCS, Cricket, and Virgin Mobile USA, know this and have been aggressively lowering price points to steal postpaid customers from the big boys. Today, T-Mobile launched its defense.

Starting on October 18, prepaid T-Mobile customers have a raft of new options when it comes to their monthly plan, and that now includes mobile data. The plans apply to both feature phones and smartphones.

The new plans are:

• $70/month Unlimited Talk and Text with 2GB of Data
• $50/month Unlimited Talk and Text with 100MB of Data
• $30/month 1,500 Talk and Text (mix and match voice and text messages) with 30MB of Data
• Unlimited Text and $0.10/minute; and
• $1.49/day Web DayPass.

These plans undercut many of the postpaid plans offered by the competition, and more closely mirror those of T-Mobile's prepaid competitors.

T-Mobile is also rolling out new prepaid mobile broadband data plans that are compatible with its Jet Prepaid USB Laptop Stick product. The laptop dongle comes packaged in a prepaid kit, with a SIM card included. These data plans are aimed at those who don't use mobile broadband all that frequently, but still have need of a backup option just in case.

Prepaid customers can pay $50 for 1GB of data per month, $30 for 300MB of data per month, or $10 for 100MB of data per week.

T-Mobile didn't mention how much the laptop stick will cost. It also didn't mention if the new laptop stick can access its standard HSPA 3G network or its faster HSPA+ 3G network.

All of the above plans are available without a contract, without a credit check, and won't hit users with overage charges if they surpass their limits.