- T-Mobile announced new rate plans for its postpaid and prepaid brands, including a 5-year price guarantee
- The un-carrier’s history with ‘price lock’ makes that claim look squirrelly
- T-Mobile’s Jon Freier reassured us that it’s a promise that’s going to stick
T-Mobile today unveiled new “simplified and refreshed” price plans across its postpaid T-Mobile and prepaid Metro by T-Mobile brands, promising to add more value with price guarantees on talk, text and data plans for five years.
"Guarantee" is T-Mobile’s word. We’re not sure what exactly it means, given T-Mobile’s history with “price lock,” which turned out to be more of a suggestion than the real deal. Customers were seething last year when they were told they were going to see price hikes on plans they believed were “guaranteed” when they signed up for them.
But we’re told this latest guarantee is no gimmick.
“We are absolutely signing up for the guarantee for the next five years,” T-Mobile Consumer Group President Jon Freier told Fierce, noting that it’s an extension of the “price lock” that T-Mobile’s been offering for a while now.
Asked if T-Mobile’s 5-year guarantee was a response to Verizon’s announcement a few weeks ago of a 3-year guarantee, Freier said T-Mobile’s been working on this new set of plans for months and there’s no way it could have pulled all this together in a matter of days or weeks in reaction to a competitor. For the same reason, he said it was not timed to coincide with Verizon’s Q1 earnings today.
“One of the things that we’ve heard from customers is that the more definition that we can put in terms of timing around the guarantee, the more believable and useful that guarantee is,” he said. “So we chose to roll out with five years.”
Freier said the new plans provide savings and extra value for consumers at a time when they’re getting hit by inflation and higher prices from all walks of life. Since 2020, consumers have seen the cost of everyday essentials increase by more than 20%. “Everything is going up, it seems like,” he commented.
The new postpaid plans are tiered, with Experience Beyond – at $170/month for three lines – targeting the high end, Experience More aimed at the middle range and Essentials for the low end. They’re essentially replacing the Go5G Next and Go5G plans that were announced in 2023, but customers who are on those older plans can remain on them for the foreseeable future. Eventually, the Go5G plans will be phased out.
“There’s not one area of Experience More and Experience Beyond that's worse than Go5G Plus or Go5G Next,” he said, adding that the same benefits that are in Experience Beyond will be included in the Go5G Next, so customers who are on T-Mobile’s most premium plan today will not feel like they’re getting left out.
For the prepaid Metro by T-Mobile brand, the company said it’s lowering prices across the board and packing more value into four new plans: Metro Starter, Metro Starter Plus, Metro Flex Unlimited and Metro Flex Unlimited Plus.
Again, Metro says the lower prepaid prices on talk, text and data are locked in for the next five years. In addition, consumers can get a new phone on each plan when they port their number from another carrier.
Even with tariffs threatening to jack up the price of phones, Freier said none of these current offers contemplate future tariffs. “It's hard to know where things are going. But anything that we're announcing here has absolutely nothing to do with any currently known or proposed tariff,” he said.
“We just know that there's pain, you know, in consumers lives today, and what we're trying to do is address some of that and make it easier,” he added.
Satellite messaging in new plans
In its April 3 press release, Verizon also made a point of saying it was the “first and only in the industry” to guarantee free satellite text messaging on qualifying devices on any myPlan. “We don't believe that people should have to pay for this. It’s value and peace of mind, on us,” Verizon stated.
That appeared to be some well-placed snark directed at T-Mobile, which previously signaled it would charge a fee for its satellite-based service.
With the new plans announced today, T-Mobile said T-Satellite, the satellite service that’s now in beta with Starlink, will be included in the Experience Beyond plan at no extra charge when it goes commercial this summer. T-Satellite will be free on Experience More plans until the end of the year; after that, it will be offered for $15/month.
The new postpaid plans for T-Mobile are effective starting Wednesday and the new Metro by T-Mobile plans go into effect on Thursday.