T-Mobile has changed its uncarrier deals after paying for costly ETF fees. T-Mobile increased the price of the unlimited plan to $80 a month and upped the amount of tethered data to 5GB on Friday for new customers.
Apparently those data hogs on unlimited plans were using an average of 5GB a month while those with other plans used between one and two gigabytes.
T-Mobile increased the amount of data with its lowest priced Simple Choice $50 a month plan to 1GB before throttling up from 500 MB. The $60 a month plan now includes 3GB of data and tethering while 5GB is $70 a month. Both $70 plans include 5G of tethering.
T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference that T-Mobile is along with working on customer growth also increased cash flows and profits.
T-Mobile is also working on building more towers and gaining more spectrum assets. On Sunday, AT&T lowered the prices for its Value Share plans.
In the news release from T-Mobile it reported "T-Mobile customers use nearly 50 percent more data now than they did just a year ago when Simple Choice first launched, outpacing the industry's growth rate in mobile data usage."
T-Mobile plans include unlimited international texting and data roaming in many major countries.
Even though wireless carriers claim to be reducing prices. "When you really analyze a lot of the pricing moves that have been made, there has not been a significant repricing," Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said at a Morgan Stanley conference last week.
"I think it is interesting given my years in the industry, how you hear things like price war and all that being kicked around in the media today and this is really nothing different than we have seen over the last couple of decades," Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam said on a conference call last month. Verizon recently increased data slightly for its lowest smartphone plans and is offering $100 credits.
AT&T and Verizon remain the big players, they do not have much to worry about unless T-Mobile and Sprint merge.