Just over a week from the initial announcement of Sprint’s $15 per month Unlimited Kickstart offer for those who switched to its carrier services, the promotion will be brought to a close. Those who manage to get in on the deal before it expires – on June 15 at midnight ET – will be able to keep the pricing. However, pricing will return to its previous rates for new customers once that happens. Sprint says that the deal is closing because the demand was extremely high. As of this writing, the company hasn’t provided any figures to go along with its claim. It’s not unlikely that the fourth-largest U.S. carrier had preallocated a set number of subscriptions to be filled at the promotional pricing. If that’s the case, that is probably expected to fill up by the deal’s new end-date.
In the meantime, the more usual prices for the company’s mobile plans sit at around $100 for four lines on its Unlimited Freedom-branded plans. That’s down to another offer which prices the third and fourth lines at free until the end of July. Of course, there are a couple of drawbacks to its promotional plan as compared to the higher priced plan. While the higher priced plan allows for video streaming at up to 1080p, music at 1.5Mbps, and online gaming at 8Mbps, the $15 promotion limits things. By comparison, video streams, music, and gaming are limited to 480p, 500Kbps, and 2Mbps, respectively on the more affordable plan. Users also need to be coming over from another carrier to take advantage of the cheaper pricing and won’t be able to pick up a device from Sprint on its leasing option. At the same time, the plans allow more or fewer lines to be added at the same $15 per line cost, so its a high-value trade-off in any case.
Despite the fact that some other carriers – such as AT&T – are currently raising prices, Sprint’s plans are substantially less costly. However, there are a few details that are worth considering. First, this is an online only deal, so those who might be interested will need to take advantage through Sprint’s official website. At the same time, unless Sprint’s merger deal with T-Mobile goes through, and in spite of significant year-over-year growth for several years, the company’s network still doesn’t have quite the reach of its competitors. Regardless of which carrier is chosen, it’s always a good idea to ensure that a carrier has good network signal in a given area before signing up.