T-Mobile has announced new pricing tiers for its individual and family plans that the company says aim to do away with overage fees.
Starting at $59.99 per month, individual postpaid users can get unlimited talk time and texting when they sign up for a new contract. Users can also add so-called "high-speed" data downloads to this plan for additional monthly fees. For example, T-Mobile offers 200MB of high-speed data for $69 per month, 2 GB for $79, 5GB for $89, and 10GB for $119.
Families can also take advantage of unlimited talk and text for $99 per month and can add 200MB of data for an extra $20 per month. Each increase in data brings an additional $20 monthly charge. According to a statement from T-Mobile, the $139 unlimited family plan, which includes up to 2GB of data, will amount to $350 in savings per user over the course of the two-year contract.
No-contract users can select a Monthly4G prepaid option for unlimited talk and text, starting at $50. This plan also includes up to 100MB of data downloads.
If users go over their monthly data cap, T-Mobile will reduce download speed until the end of the month, rather than charging overage fees.
"The data slow-downs might not be a major issue for the average person, who uses about 1GB per month, according to T-Mobile, but if you have a particularly data-intensive month, plan on some slow-loading Web sites by the end of your billing cycle," writes PCMag.
Engadget wrote of the plans, "There are some odd restrictions, such as the inability to add texting or data to the mid-tier plans and no choice for unlimited voice service without SMS tacked on. We do, however, like the overage-free data options that simply drop to 2G speeds when you reach your plan's threshold instead of shocking you with huge fees at the end of the month."
T-Mobile's customer satisfaction rank sunk slightly over the past year, and the carrier posted record subscriber losses for the first three months of 2011.