T-Mobile today capped off its promised three days of market-disruptive announcements with the news that the company will eliminate overage charges for customers on all T-Mobile plans, extending an offering the company previously made only on certain plans.
A T-Mobile spokesman said customers will effectively get unlimited domestic voice and text. On the data side, customers will have service throttled back to slower 2G speeds if they exceed their monthly allotment, the spokesman explained.
In a move typical of T-Mobile’s in-your-face marketing, the company also has started an online petition calling on its three major national competitors AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to also end overage fees.
“Charging overage fees is a greedy, predatory practice that needs to go,” said T-Mobile CEO John Legere in today’s announcement.
Calling T-Mobile “an advocate for consumers,” he added that “I personally won’t be satisfied until we obliterate this shameful practice from the entire wireless industry.”
Today’s announcement caps off three days of disruptive announcements promised by Legere which began this past Wednesday when the company announced its “Simple Starter Plan,” which offers unlimited talk and text and up to 500 megabytes (MB) of 4G LTE data and tethering for $40 a month.
Thursday T-Mobile launched “Operation Tablet Freedom,” a program that lets customers add a tablet to their postpaid voice plan for free. The company also said customers with WiFi-only tablets could upgrade to a 4G LTE-enabled model for nothing down and pay no more than they would for a WiFi-only model. To get the offer, customers have to activate a device on a 1 GB or higher mobile Internet plan with no annual service contract.
Friday T-Mobile took a break from its three-day plan, although it did open every store early to support the launch of new device models from Samsung and HTC.
In a blog post today, Legere said the response to last week’s moves has been “fantastic” and “unbelievable.” Although Legere has refrained from his typical usage of four-letter words in the blog posts he has penned for each day of the touted three days, today he did ask readers to “imagine the smile on my face as I watch millions upon millions of Americans flipping the bird to the insanity and pain of the past and joining this consumer revolution – while I sit back and watch the competition flounder.”
T-Mobile’s announcements this week and last are the latest in a series of moves the company has made to challenge long-term industry practices that are unpopular with consumers. Earlier this year the company said it would pay early termination fees for customers switching from other carriers.
Previous moves included offering customers a base level of free mobile data every month, more frequent device upgrades, and a trade-in program on the iPhone 5.
