Sprint Follows Family Plan With New Unlimited Offer at $60

Sprint Corp. announced a new, $60-a-month, unlimited-data plan Thursday, after adding a shared-data offering for families early this week.

The offer, widely expected following Sprint’s family-plan deal on Monday, undercuts rival T-Mobile US Inc.’s unlimited offering at $80 a month.

“People know Sprint for Unlimited,” CEO Marcelo Claure said in the announcement. “Unlimited talk, text and data for $60 is the best unlimited postpaid plan available.”

Roger Entner, with Recon Analytics, called the move aggressive, but added that it may not stir a response.

“I think T-Mobile is going to ignore it and see what kind of impact it has on its finances,” Entner said. “It’s a relatively small (part of the) market.”

Sprint’s shared-data plan announced Monday targets families, which are a much larger part of the market. It also aims to compete most directly with AT&T and Verizon, which offer shared-data plans but not unlimited plans. AT&T and Verizon each have more customers than Sprint and T-Mobile have together.

Customers are eligible for Sprint’s $60 unlimited plan if they purchase a phone through Sprint’s installment purchase plan, pay full price for the device or bring their own phone compatible with its network.

Sprint’s announcement followed T-Mobile’s jab-laced announcement of a referral program that would provide a one-year unlimited upgrade or $10 a month credit for customers who “rescue beleaguered Sprint” customers over to the magenta network.

“Sprint’s customers have suffered much. They’ve endured the Framily. They’ve endured America’s slowest nationwide LTE network,” it said.

T-Mobile’s referral credit is available for recruiting customers from AT&T and Verizon, too.

Sprint’s announcement, which followed T-Mobile’s earlier in the day, made a bit of a jab back. It said Sprint’s plan is better than the promotional price at T-Mobile and customers “don’t have to jump through T-Mobile’s hoops and recruit their friends.”

Recruiting new customers was a key feature of Sprint’s Framily plan, which it is dropping Friday. Consumers would earn bigger discounts by adding more subscribers to their Framily accounts. Anyone could join a Framily, as the billing was handled separately, and some Sprint customers offered their Framily accounts on eBay.

This article appeared in print in the August 21st, 2014 edition of Hamodia.