T-Mobile Brings Back 'Rollovers' For Customers' Cell Phone Data Plans
NEW YORK (KCBS)_ T-Mobile is now letting customers carry over their unused cellular-data allotments for up to a year.
U.S. wireless carriers have been pushing consumers into larger data plans, but they typically lose what they don't use at the end of their billing month. Under T-Mobile's plan announced Tuesday, customers would be able to stash what they don't use for the future. Customers will also get a one-time free allotment of 10 gigabytes when the program starts next month.
The program is open only to customers on Simple Choice plans with at least 3 gigabytes for a smartphone or 1 gigabyte for a tablet.
Unlike other carriers, T-Mobile doesn't offer plans in which families can share a collective pool of data. Like T-Mobile's rollover approach, family data sharing give consumers more flexibility.
The company has been fighting back against the larger wireless carriers with a series of new features and plans and this is the latest to be rolled out.
T-Mobile Brings Back Rollover Data For Customers' Cell Phone Plans
"It's an old concept, but it actually used to be called rollover minutes. AT&T had this old deal where if you didn't use all your minutes, they rolled over to the next month. Now we don't count minutes, most people have unlimited," said KCBS Technology Analyst Larry Magid.
Magid said the new plan is good for "inconsistent" customers such as himself who tend to use a lot of data if he's travelling, but if he's around home and can connect to his Wi-Fi reception near home, he's less likely to use data.
"T-Mobile is trying to catch up because they don't have the subscriber base as AT&T and Verizon." Magid said a lot of that has to do with criticism over the company's spotty service." Magid added that it seems to depend on where you live and that everyone's not going to have the same experience.
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