Apple Stores selling prepaid T-Mobile iPhones, carrier starts iOS device sales at Costco
Consumers looking to make the jump to T-Mobile with a new iPhone or iPad now have two new places to turn, as the scrappy carrier announced Thursday that Apple retail stores have begun selling iPhones with prepaid T-Mobile service, plus Costco has picked up a limited range of T-Mobile iPhones and iPads.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere
To sweeten the deal for prepaid customers, those who purchase and activate an iPhone at an Apple Store will receive a $50 discount when they add $50 or $70 worth of service. Those who choose a more traditional postpaid plan can receive an iTunes gift card worth $50.
Costco, meanwhile -- to which Apple products recently returned with steep discounts -- is now offering both the iPhone and iPad for use on the magenta-themed wireless provider. The discount retailer is stocking T-Mobile variants of the 16-gigabyte iPhone 5s in silver and space gray, the 16-gigabyte iPad mini with Retina display in silver, and the 16-gigabyte iPad Air in space gray.
Consumers purchasing a device at Costco can opt for T-Mobile's monthly installment plan, and the tablets qualify for 200 free megabytes of 4G data each month and an additional 1.2 gigabytes of free data each month through the end of 2014. Purchases can be made both online and in store.
Apple and T-Mobile have seemingly developed a close working relationship in recent months as the carrier beefs up its offerings to aggressively compete with larger rivals Verizon and AT&T. Last week, T-Mobile announced a new "test drive" program in which consumers can receive a free iPhone 5s to test out on the T-Mobile network for one week, and Apple's iTunes Radio is among the streaming services included in the carrier's new "Music Freedom" campaign campaign that excludes streaming music from data caps.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere
To sweeten the deal for prepaid customers, those who purchase and activate an iPhone at an Apple Store will receive a $50 discount when they add $50 or $70 worth of service. Those who choose a more traditional postpaid plan can receive an iTunes gift card worth $50.
Costco, meanwhile -- to which Apple products recently returned with steep discounts -- is now offering both the iPhone and iPad for use on the magenta-themed wireless provider. The discount retailer is stocking T-Mobile variants of the 16-gigabyte iPhone 5s in silver and space gray, the 16-gigabyte iPad mini with Retina display in silver, and the 16-gigabyte iPad Air in space gray.
Consumers purchasing a device at Costco can opt for T-Mobile's monthly installment plan, and the tablets qualify for 200 free megabytes of 4G data each month and an additional 1.2 gigabytes of free data each month through the end of 2014. Purchases can be made both online and in store.
Apple and T-Mobile have seemingly developed a close working relationship in recent months as the carrier beefs up its offerings to aggressively compete with larger rivals Verizon and AT&T. Last week, T-Mobile announced a new "test drive" program in which consumers can receive a free iPhone 5s to test out on the T-Mobile network for one week, and Apple's iTunes Radio is among the streaming services included in the carrier's new "Music Freedom" campaign campaign that excludes streaming music from data caps.
Comments
Verizon has until September (October; whenever) to lower contract prices for smartphones, otherwise sayonara Verizon, hello same network on Straight Talk.
I'm not really sure why, since I'm not even a T-Mobile customer, but I happened to watch a little bit of that last event that they had. Besides Apple events, I don't really follow any events by other companies.
Anyway, I doubt that other phone companies would ever have an event like T-Mobile's, because the CEO was cursing, using words like F*ck on stage, and I found the whole thing to be hilarious.
I don't like fake Mofos, I like people who tell it like it is, and I like T-Mobile's aggressive steps that they have taken lately. The other big cell companies deserve to be shaken up a bit. Cell plans and data plans are a damn joke in the US. When I travelled in Europe last summer, I got a ton of data, for way less than I would have paid in the USA. That needs to change, and it had damn better change.
Verizon has until September (October; whenever) to lower contract prices for smartphones, otherwise sayonara Verizon, hello same network on Straight Talk.
Is that true?
Our house is a ways from a cell tower, and we dropped calls a lot with T-Mobile and ATT, although this was some time ago. Verizon is the only one that could hold a call - can I get Verizon's network w Straight Talk?
Our house is a ways from a cell tower, and we dropped calls a lot with T-Mobile and ATT, although this was some time ago. Verizon is the only one that could hold a call - can I get Verizon's network w Straight Talk?
I've been told that iPhones purchased through ST will be using CDMA, and the network ST contracts for that is Verizon's. I'll probably reconfirm a dozen or so times between then and my date of purchase (both because I can't remember anything and because I want to be certain). Those iPhones will of course be GSM unlocked, so there's that benefit, too.
Do you know that I'll be paying less for an iPhone with unlimited/unlimited/unlimited on Straight Talk than I pay right now for a flip phone with 1000/250/0 on Verizon?
Meaning minutes, messages, and data, respectively. Yeah, I have to buy the thing outright, but if history is any indication I'll be using it for seven years, so there's no worry of a return on "investment".
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Yes but the fine print is that you get low priority on cell sites.
Your usage case is not the only one. T-Mobile USA's LTE coverage and performance are great in some places, not so hot in some others, and non-existent in a bunch of other spots.
Trust me, I've been using the same prepaid Monthly4G plan (or is it 4GMonthly? I forget) for about nine months.
The fact of the matter of is that T-Mobile does not have the same breadth of coverage as AT&T nor Verizon. Why? They simply don't have as many cell towers. Same with Sprint.
I live in Silicon Valley and I can go to a certain, well-frequented place two blocks away from my high-tech town's main downtown street and get zero LTE coverage from T-Mobile. As a matter of fact, I only get EDGE speeds at that location, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
If it works great for you, well, you're lucky.
Every LTE is slamming until it's saturated with users. If it's happened with VZW, and AT&T it'll eventually happen to T-Mobile sooner rather than later.
If I had based my opinion of T-Mobile off that picture, I would have run, screaming in the other direction.
There are some locations that have no T-Mobile coverage while traveling like southern Alabama and eastern Mississippi, away from the interstates, but that is also true for the other carriers. I was skiing in Eldora Resort in Colorado near Boulder, and the only carrier that had coverage at the resort was T-Mobile. This was fortunate, since I lost my iPhone on the slopes, and through T-Mobile and Find My Phone I was able to locate it. It was severely damaged but still worked and was eligible for the $80 replacement cost through Applecare Plus. Not bad for a $900 iPhone.
At home there must be a tower nearby as I regularly get 50mbps down and 30mbps up with T-Mobile LTE. This is true in most of the area where I live.
Trust me, I've been using the same prepaid Monthly4G plan (or is it 4GMonthly? I forget) for about nine months.
The fact of the matter of is that T-Mobile does not have the same breadth of coverage as AT&T nor Verizon. Why? They simply don't have as many cell towers. Same with Sprint.
I live in Silicon Valley and I can go to a certain, well-frequented place two blocks away from my high-tech town's main downtown street and get zero LTE coverage from T-Mobile. As a matter of fact, I only get EDGE speeds at that location, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
If it works great for you, well, you're lucky.
T-Mobile only started their LTE expansion last year, so they have been playing catch up. Even so, just in the 9 months that I've been on T-Mobile's $30 prepaid plan, the LTE coverage in the Bay Area has gone from nearly nonexistent to available in the majority of places that I go. Even in most places without LTE, their HSPA+ ("4G") speeds are generally very good.
One issue for prepaid customers is that those plans supposedly do not include domestic roaming, so you depend entirely on T-Mo's native network, which has very spotty coverage outside of metro areas.
I presume that the Sili Valley town you're referring to is Palo Alto. Tech town, adjacent to Stanford, tech company headquarters galore, wealthy tech workers everywhere, and some of the worst cell coverage in the region. The issue there, and in a lot of other wealthy enclaves, is NIMBYs that flat out do not want cell towers in their neighborhood and are willing to hire lawyers to make the approvals extremely difficult. AT&T has been trying to upgrade its service in Palo Alto for years, but every proposal they've put forth was deemed not good enough by residents.
Now there's a Verizon proposal to attach a cell antenna to a light tower on a Little League field and provide the local league with some much needed income to maintain the facility. Once again, the opponents are shouting on about how the tower will impact their property values and how cell radiation endangers the children, never mind PA's absurd run up in housing prices and the fact that weak cell coverage means that your cell phone emits far more radiation than it it would with a stronger signal. You don't get nearly the same opposition in less wealthy areas, so a lot of them end up with better cell service than places like Palo Alto.