In the past, when we were to buy a phone on contract through a carrier in United States, the carrier essentially owned your phone until the contract was over. If for some reason the contract was not fulfilled, the carrier reserves the right to make the phone unusable by adding the device to network blacklists, the phone would then be denied connection to any carrier’s network. T-Mobile is now offering the customer the right to own their own phone outright from the beginning, sort of.
Under the new T-Mobile UN-Carrier model, the customer will actually be able to own their own phone at any point during the plan’s duration. If the customer chooses the down payment model, the device will be locked to T-Mobile’s networks until the remainder of the phone is paid off. The payment plan for most phones is based on a 2-year model and will run the consumer around $20.00/month after a down payment that is based on the particular model of phone that is selected. Under this model there will be no early termination fees, as there is no contract signed. If the customer is to leave T-Mobile at any point, they will be billed for the remainder of what is owed on the actual device only. Another option is to turn the device back in to T-Mobile, the customer will then be credited the fair-market value of the phone at the time of return, and billed for the remainder of what is owed after the credit. Confused?
This model, according to T-Mobile, will actually save the consumer roughly $1000.00 over the course of the 2-year payment plan. The reason for this, is that the price of service added with the monthly payment of the device through T-Mobile will still be basically equivalent to the amount that a customer would pay through AT&T with service and tacked on data alone, and that is with factoring in the device subsidy. If you were to want unlimited everything (like with T-Mobile’s Unlimited $70.00 UnCarrier plan) with AT&T, the savings per month would be substantially greater. Through AT&T, you would pay $69.99 for unlimited minutes, $20 for unlimited messaging, and $50.00 for 5GB of data and you would be billed for additional data as AT&T would not drop keep data coming at slower speeds for free like T-Mobile does after you hit the 5GB mark. That is over $70/month savings already with the most basic of plans. I am not even gonna go there with the savings over big red.
There you have it. The savings with T-Mobile’s new model are all there, and T-Mobile is waiting with open arms for all of you unhappy AT&T and Verizon users to head on over to the nearest T-Mobile store and sign up without a contract and own your own phone(sort of). T-Mobile will also have all of the top devices this year, including the HTC ONE for $99 down and promises LTE in 80% of the top 25 markets by the end of the year. How may of you will be running to T-Mobile to get your mobile fix now?
Source TmoNews