As much as T-Mobile’s competitors want you to think they aren’t scared or nervous, it’s looking more and more like they are. After T-Mobile announced JUMP, every other carrier announced their own version of JUMP. And now according to a report from The Verge, it appears that Sprint is working on a new type of plan. According to a source familiar with the matter, the new option will be called a “Framily” plan. I know, I know, I thought it was a typo too, but it’s not. It will allow you to share an account ID with up to ten of your friends, who are also on Sprint. But you’re still going to be billed separately. The plans are starting at $55 per month for an individual line, which will get you about 1GB of data along with unlimited talk and text. Those data hungry users can bump up to 3GB for an additional $10. Or unlimited for an extra $20 per month.
Whats interesting about these plans is that fact that more lines there are on your account, the lower the prices get. Ecah line added to the account cuts $5 off, all the way down to $25 per month. But the hard part is finding seven or more willing friends who are also on Sprint. These plans are said not to be a two-year contract, or offer a device subsidy. So unless you’re looking to utilize Sprint’s One Up program for early upgrades, you’re going to be paying full retail price for your phone. Users who have the unlimited data add-on will also be able to do a device trade-in after one year.
As most of us know, T-Mobile has been very aggressive all throughout 2013, and we are expecting that to continue through 2014. T-Mobile is announcing Uncarrier 4.0 at CES tomorrow afternoon, which we’ll be covering as expected. But it looks like Sprint is looking to get a bit aggressive. When you think about it, $55 for unlimited text and talk and 1GB of data is pretty good. It’s a bit more than what T-Mobile’s cheapest plan is, but still much cheaper than what AT&T and Verizon offer. Which is exactly what Sprint needs to do.
Update: Sprint has just made the Framily Plans official in their newsroom.