T-mobile

[Adam]

The M8 is going to be Legen.....wait for it.....Dary!

For about 8 months.

[dochielomn]

Considering I have lived with Motorolla Droid Bionic since Sept 2011, I think the HTC M8 will fit my needs.

[kevm14]

http://www.wpcentral.com/t-mobile-gets- ... arter-plan

For $40, you get unlimited talk and text, plus 500MB LTE. They still do the ETF payoff thing (Ed). Though their family plans are a better deal I think but this is pretty cheap for a single line.

[FixItFelix]

Just changed my plan to 10 gigz apparently even if you were in the legacy program and on contract you would get the off contract discount for $15 instead of $40. My parents went to the att store to activate my moms phone and they told them this. Well see if it reflects on the bill but I'm not sure what this means. Am I off contract now ?

also are there any new windows phones I should keep an eye out on for the fall ? Might buy one off contract or even an older Lumia for cheap

[kevm14]

Yeah I thought they were offering off contract to even the on contract people.

There is the Lumia 930 which is the Icon, but I don't know if this will be offered in the US...so we may wait for an actual MS Lumia since I think Nokia turned down their dev efforts during the purchase (which took longer than anticipated). So there may be a bit of a dry spell.

[kevm14]

I took at look at my data usage on AT&T and concluded that I could get away with a 1GB plan for our phones. Jamie uses literally zero data, so it's just me. I went over 2GB once but otherwise I am under 1GB. I switched to 1GB and will save another $16/mo, bringing my total bill, after taxes, down from about $92 to around $76. The best I could do on T-Mobile would be 1GB per line for a total of $80. But subtract a 15% discount, then add 15% for taxes and you get about $78 out the door. So, again, no reason to switch to T-Mobile.

[Adam]

Finally got a bill for my changed-around T-Mobile plan and updated work discount, so here is some $$ breakdown for fees and stuff:

$50.00 - unlimited talk and texts, 1GB of "high speed" data, unlimited 2G after that
-$7.50 - 15% work discount
$0.88 - Federal Universal Service Fund
$1.61 - Regulatory Programs Fee
$3.31 - State & Local Sales Tax (7%? not sure where this is calculated from)
$2.37 - State Gross Receipts Tax
$0.26 - GIS Technology Fund
$1.00 - State 911
------------------------------
$51.93

[kevm14]

AT&T is adding data for the old 2GB and 4GB buckets. The 2GB bucket for $40/mo goes to 3GB and the 4GB bucket for $70/mo goes to 6GB. I used to have the 2GB $40/mo bucket (plus 2 lines). Unfortunately, no mention of any upgrades to the 1GB bucket I just switched to (for $25/mo).

[kevm14]

Finally got a bill for my changed-around T-Mobile plan and updated work discount, so here is some $$ breakdown for fees and stuff:

$50.00 - unlimited talk and texts, 1GB of "high speed" data, unlimited 2G after that
-$7.50 - 15% work discount
$0.88 - Federal Universal Service Fund
$1.61 - Regulatory Programs Fee
$3.31 - State & Local Sales Tax (7%? not sure where this is calculated from)
$2.37 - State Gross Receipts Tax
$0.26 - GIS Technology Fund
$1.00 - State 911
------------------------------
$51.93

Well, on T-Mobile prepaid, for $45/mo (no taxes, but also no discount), you get unlimited talk + text and 2GB of 4G data. That's even cheaper with twice the data. If you want to be cheap, for $40/mo prepaid, you get unlimited talk + text and 500MB 4G data.

And if you don't need minutes, their unlimited text + 100 minutes talk + 5GB data for $30/mo prepaid is still the best in the industry I think.

[kevm14]

https://www.myfamilymobile.com/default.aspx

$30/mo, unlimited talk, text and data (500MB LTE). Post-paid which is an interesting twist. So add 15% tax/fees. Not sure if a T-Mobile employee discount would apply but for a single line this is impressive. But as you add lines it becomes less cost effective.