Unlimited data in many respects is a thing of the past for most carriers, and not just in the U.S. T-Mobile still offers unlimited data plans however, and they’ve been very proud of that particular fact for quite some time. With the rise in smartphone use as a main form of internet connectivity for many users, and a heavy focus from companies on providing streaming services for music, movies, and TV, unlimited data can be viewed as a rare commodity that consumers would be grateful to have. That could soon be changing for T-mobile customers though, as statements made by T-Mobile’s CFO Braxton Carter at a recent Deutsche bank conference may be pointing toward a future for the carrier without unlimited data being part of their plan offerings.
This isn’t too hard to imagine with plan add-ons like T-Mobile’s Binge On and Music Freedom services, both which offer streaming of as much music and movie/tv as the customer wants at no cost to their data buckets so long as the streaming is coming from one of the listed partners for either service, like YouTube, Play Movies, Netflix, Pandora, Play Music and so on. As carter pointed out at the conference, the company is looking to “pivot away” from unlimited data, stating that, “We’ve had and continue to have a strategy of pivoting away from unlimited.”
While it would seem that T-Mobile’s future plans for the network don’t include unlimited data for customers, the company still currently offers it albeit at a higher cost than a couple of years ago, as Carter points out that T-Mobile has “hiked” the price of unlimited data once per year for the last two years. While unlimited data still remains for consumers as an option, there’s no telling if or when T-Mobile will actually get rid of unlimited data entirely, but everything they’ve been doing certainly suggests this to be a possibility, more or less breaking it down to just being a matter of when instead of if. Considering the previous couple of price increases and T-Mobile’s focus on moving away from unlimited, it also wouldn’t be a surprise to see the cost of the plan rise even more at some point before the carrier does away with the service, if they choose to get rid of it.