Stealing mobile phone users, T-Mobile in the United States launches unlimited Internet access

Seizes mobile phone users T-Mobile in the United States launches unlimited Internet access (Alberta Times) In order to compete with AT&T and Verizon, the fourth largest mobile phone company in the United States...

Seizes mobile phone users, T-Mobile in the United States launches unlimited Internet access (Alberta Times) In order to compete with AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile, the fourth largest telecommunications operator in the United States, launched a wireless Internet plan for mobile phones. T-Mobile said Wednesday that its unlimited Internet plans, which it discontinued early last year, will go back on sale on September 5. The day before, MetroPCS, the fifth largest operator, used a short-term promotion to reduce the cost of wireless Internet access. Neither of the two operators, T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS, has sold the first iPhone, while their three largest competitors are preparing to start selling iPhone 5 in about a month. Sprint Nextel, the third-largest carrier, already has an unlimited Internet plan, which has attracted many customers to buy its smartphones. AT&T, the nation's second-largest cellphone company, stopped selling unlimited Internet plans two years ago, and Verizon, the No. 1, stopped selling such plans last year. Both parties moved to unlimited calling and texting, but limited time online. From a network management perspective, this makes sense, calls and text use very little network capacity, while video downloads and other data usage can clog the network and impact service to the general public. The iPhone uses so much data that it once caused big problems for AT&T's networks in New York and San Francisco. Sprint's network also showed signs of congestion in some tests. Plans with limited Internet access are very inconvenient for customers. Because it's easier to calculate how many minutes are used in a month, but it's harder to know how many gigabytes are used. In Bellevue, Wash., T-Mobile's vice president of marketing, Kevin McLaughlin, said unlimited plans are what customers want. He added that T-Mobile is confident it can keep its network "fast and reliable" even if customers have large amounts of data. T-Mobile's unlimited Internet plan is an additional $30 per month for customers who already have a calling and texting plan, or $20 for customers with a "value" plan. MetroPCS Communications' unlimited Internet plan is $55 per month during the promotion period and includes unlimited text messages and calls. The original price is $70. T-Mobile has previously said its data plans were "unlimited," but once a customer reached a certain level of usage within a month, data would slow down significantly. AT&T does the same thing. T-Mobile's new unlimited internet plan maintains maximum speeds. T-Mobile's new plan is $5 cheaper than the regular high-speed 5 gigabytes data plan. The advantage of a limited Internet plan is that users can turn their phones into "mobile hotspots" and connect tablets and computers to the Internet. This is not allowed on unlimited internet plans. T-Mobile US and MetroPCS must have some headroom on their networks, at least for now, so they offer unlimited data. T-Mobile has upgraded its network and is losing customers in large part because it doesn't sell iPhones. MetroPCS, which is headquartered in Dallas, and its customers are mostly low-income households, will complete another network upgrade with higher data speeds, but only 8% of its customers will be able to take full advantage of it. The rest require buying a new phone. "The bottom line is they have the ability to add many subscribers without affecting the speed of the network," said Stephen Crowley, an independent network engineering consultant. T-Mobile US is a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG and has 33.2 million subscribers. MetroPCS has only 9.3 million users.