iPad from T-Mobile with free monthly 200MB data for life | Hacker News Reader

iPad from T-Mobile with free monthly 200MB data for life

newsroom.t-mobile.com

109 pointscygwin9881 comments

I'm guessing the median lifespan of an iPad is about 3 years, and 95% of them will reach their end of life in about 6 years.

So, we are talking about, on average, 7.2 GBytes of wireless data, 14 Gigabytes on the outside - spread over a number of years, and, at 200 MBytes/month, very low impact to their LTE networks.

Of course, nowadays, 200 MBytes lasts the average LTE user about 3-4 days, even if they are trying to be conservative.

I'm guessing there will be a lot of upselling ot bigger data packages.

What is cool about this, though - no contract, and you don't even have to be a TMobile customer.

It's a fantastic way to get people to buy the T-Mobile version (well I don't know how much data I use, but maybe it's under 200MB/mo) and then upsell them to a plan after 4 YouTube videos.

Plus you can pull this out of your advertising budget, and the marginal cost of the infrastructure use is pretty much zero, at least until T-Mobile's subscriber numbers go up rather substantially.

They're probably expecting some phone plan converts as well. Smart.

My 99 RMB/month ChinaUnicom plan comes with only 300 MB a month. Since YouTube is blocked anyways, its plenty for email and basic web surfing.

you been robbed. there is a plan with 2.6G, only 50RMB/month.

Mine also comes with voice. For Unicom, it's an ok deal, and I have a few add ons like international roaming on top of that.

You've also got to figure that the Cellular data is basically a backup, really.

I'm not generally that mobile with my iPad, but even if I were, I'd have a hard time imagining less than 99% usage on WiFi vs. Cellular.

Of course, YMMV, but it seems like they're basically giving away 'emergency data' as a sales pitch, and yes, likely for the opportunity to upsell a real plan.

Yes. Your point is fair and true. But I think as people begin to realize their data usage is going up, they will reluctant to use data usage if they could just use wifi. But on the other hand, free 200MB is good enough for a lot of normal browsing.

My phone has 200MB data and I can barely use up every month even though I read HN like at least 2-3 times a week. And it's easier if I can use data plan on the go when wifi is not a option.

edit and I think it would be interesting to see study on how much mobile version benefits users over regular desktop version of an web app.

> My phone has 200MB data and I can barely use up every month even though I read HN like at least 2-3 times a week.

Meanwhile mine has 2GB and I generally use 80~90% of it.

Well, do you use leave it on for a long time? I generally use 2-3 times a week on the phone, at most 30 minutes. I do occasionally browse a couple Youtube video (short one though). I usually end up with 50MB~100MB.

This is definitely one of those "everyone is different" situations.

I know people who have an expensive unlimited data plan (usually because they got the iDevice for nothing if they signed up for it, not bothering to work out that they could buy the device for 9-months of what the 24 month contract costs) and probably only use a couple of hundred Mb of it because they are on home or public wireless most of the time. They are the sort of people I see benefiting from this unless the price is significantly higher than the standard Apple price for the same device.

I'm on a plan that gives me 1.5Gb. Despite being a fairly heavy user a lot of my use is also over WiFi. Many months I use no more than 0.5Gb, but when I'm out and about more I sometimes get close to the full 1.5.

Conversely I know someone who blows through several Gb every month without fail. To be honest I'm not entirely sure how given his lifestyle (from a technology PoV at least) isn't particularly different to mine, but it shows that one size certainly does not fit all.

> To be honest I'm not entirely sure how given his lifestyle (from a technology PoV at least) isn't particularly different to mine, but it shows that one size certainly does not fit all.

Might just be that he doesn't use much wifi for some reason. Because of my pretty high data cap, I've never bothered to setup a wifi AP in my flat, my computers are all wired so the AP would mostly be useful for the phone, which can generally use 3G/LTE.

I'm wondering how badly throttled the free users will become over time.

Why throttle them? Let them hit the caps and pay for more data.

It's not just for iPad, any tablet, and not just new once. I brought my iPad 3 in yesterday and got the SIM card, and off I was. 10$ for the SIM and that's it! The guy in front of me had an old samsung tablet, same thing. You don't have to be a T-Mobile customer to get this. No credit checks or contract. They are counting on you running out of the 200mb some time and giving them money then. But other than that, it's free.

They must have some idea of 'appropriate' devices, no? For instance, I'm wondering about a mini pcie gsm modems for laptops.

A laptop is even better for them. 200mb of LTE would be gone in an instant with a laptop. "Did you just like the sample of T-Mobiles LTE service? Buy more here."

yes yes, this is exactly what I'd want the T-Mobile sales rep to think.

Has anyone tried tethering a laptop from this free plan yet?

I maybe misunderstanding your use of "teather" here but most laptops already have a port for sim chips under the battery.

Most laptops certainly do not have built in UMTS modems.

The deal is strictly for tablets for now, I was inspecting the announcement.

Will this work with an ATT ipad 3?

Yes, it works with any unlocked GSM tablet that supports their spectrum, including the AT&T iPad 3, although you may not get LTE speeds.

That's what I have. Works great!

If you buy the prepaid SIM card from their website, it's only 99 cents with free shipping.

I was confused by this too since the Tmobile website is bundling the "sim starter kit" for $10 but I got the $0.99 sim from them earlier in the year for my Nexus 4.

T-Mobile seems to be pushing the SOP for carriers in the US. I can't imagine this happening if the AT&T purchase of T-Mobile went through. Competition's a a good-thing and may cause the bigger carriers to start making adjustments as well. And to those who say that 200MB is nothing, I would guess that most people use their iPads on WiFi at home so this would mostly be used for catching up when out and about. Go T-Mobile!

T-Mobile's $70 unlimited everything plan for smartphones includes 2.5 GB of tethering.

So I'm expecting to use the iPad's free 200 MB when I want to do something quickly on the iPad, but use WiFi or tethering for extended browsing.

I accidentally blew through my free 200 MB shortly after signing up for service. I disabled WiFi in order to run a speed test having forgotten that I had a few apps updating in the background and a few minutes later, I got an email saying I ran out of data.

I have 9 days left in my billing period and my Verizon iPad mini and it reports cellular data usage of 422 MB, with 98 MB being System Services. The mini is on WiFi 95% of the time, except when I'm walking to/from school (and I don't carry it every day) carrying it or the WiFi networks I connect to are acting up.

Speed: I'm in Manhattan and I got 5.35 Mbps on T-Mobile LTE, compared to 5-8 Mbps on my AT&T iPhone 5s and 11-21 Mbps on my Verizon iPad mini.

Price: The rates mentioned in the press release apply only to voice customers. If the iPad is your only T-Mobile device, then you're looking at:

  One time passes:
  500 MB for 1 day - $10
  1 GB for 1 week - $15
  2.5 GB for 30 days - $30
  
  Recurring (30 day plans):
  700 MB - $20
  2.7 GB - $30
  4.7 GB - $40

In ios7 you can control which apps have access to LTE data. Possibly tweaking those settings will help?

It's a good idea to take a peek regardless. I found an app that I didn't even know was installed, and certainly hadn't run, which was using data in the background (and deleted it)

Doesn't the iPad have some way to limit data usage on mobile networks like Android? I can even tell it that certain wifi APs are using mobile data and to conserve bandwidth when connected to them. It works very well, I would imagine Apple has something similar.

You can block individual apps from using the cellular connection, or block cellular data entirely. Unfortunately, there's no way to configure this stuff for WiFi access points that I know of.

Edit: I know it's impolite to complain about downvotes, but I'm genuinely curious. This comment is currently at 0 points, even though I just stated something completely factual without any loaded language whatsoever. What's the deal?

Yeah, I have cellular data for the App Store turned on.

I didn't mean my comment to be a knock against Apple, as it was clearly my fault (first time with a severely limited data cap), but just to illustrate how easy it is to accidentally use up the small amount of free data T-Mobile gives you.

It's a tough problem to solve. Too much control and you overwhelm and annoy the user. Too little and it's easy to use more than you want.

Obviously, the best solution is to magically eliminate the limitations of radio spectrum and give everybody unlimited data.... Until then, I think stories like yours will continue to be common.

Hmm, interesting. Android by default notifies apps that it's on a limited data connection, and they restrict background updates and such. For example, I can install apps from the Play Store on cellular, but they won't auto-update themselves. Same with apps like Pocket, Currents, Google Music (different bitrates for cellular and non-cellular backed wifi, pre-caching), etc. Gmail won't download images/attachments automatically on cellular, but will on wifi. For all of these though, you can usually override this in an individual app's settings, such as telling Google Music to always stream high quality or Gmail to always download attachments.

My tablet barely uses any data (with syncing enabled) in the background on cellular data. This despite having background syncing turned on and quite a few apps that use it. I take it with me most places and do casual browsing on the cellular connection (public transit and airports mostly), and the most I've used was 150MB/month. It just waits to do anything bandwidth intensive until it's back on wifi.

I'm really surprised Apple hasn't done this yet. I guess that's the reason why carriers complain iDevices use so much data.

Android by default notifies apps

So does iOS.

Well, it doesn't, but you can find out.

To be specific about it, iOS has APIs that notify the application (rather than the user) about the device's network state, whether its cellular/wifi/absent. Application developers are expected to control app behavior given this information, but only some subset do.

This is still not quite as fine-grained: Android allows you to specify that some WiFi connections should be treated as 'expensive' in the same way that 3G connections are expensive, so even if you are tethering over WiFi you can still limit your data use. My S3 also has (I'm not certain it's stock) functionality to limit applications' background data use to WiFi only. I've turned that on for a couple of data-hogs.

> Price: The rates mentioned in the press release apply only to voice customers. If the iPad is your only T-Mobile device, then you're looking at:

Per recent news, for the iPad Air and retina Mini this isn't true. The 200MB free data is no-strings attached.

The 200 MB is no strings attached, but the cheaper rates mentioned in the press release do have strings attached. I'm referring in particular to:

> For T-Mobile voice customers, 'always-on' iPad plans start at just $10 a month for unlimited data including 500 MB of 4G LTE data each month. Customers can add even more 4G LTE data in 2 GB increments for just $10 more per month. For customers who would rather have the flexibility of on-demand data, T-Mobile offers daily and weekly passes. Daily passes include unlimited data with 500 MB of 4G LTE data starting at just $5. The weekly passes include unlimited data with 1 GB of 4G LTE data for $10.

Voice customers get $10 off both recurring plans and daily/weekly plans.

Expected some price shenanigans, and found one:

> * If you cancel wireless service, remaining balance on device becomes due. Total for iPad Air 16 GB $630.00

Strictly speaking, it's $629.00 for the iPad Air directly, so in fact this "free monthly 200MB data for life" costs $1

I switched to T-Mobile with the iPhone 5S, and I couldn't be happier. My coverage in the city has gotten better, I'm saving $20+ a month, and the satisfaction of flipping the bird to AT&T is incomparable.

Their phone "contracts" are the same no-bullshit deals. You get $X off the phone initially, after which you pay back the debt at $20/month. If you quit at any time you simply pay the remaining balance.

Compare with AT&T where the early-termination fees are punitive and far in excess of the "loan" they gave you to begin with.

Not really. For example, it's just as easy to look at it as $1 in financing charges, since your financing the device purchase.

I think that's the batter way to look at it since a) that's the price they've charged with or without the data, and b) I believe you can BYOD and get the same deal without any charges (other than possibly buying a SIM if you don't already have one).

Wow, so 2GB of data for just $15 a month? How do I get that as a pre-paid plan?

I currently spend $30 a month for 5GB of 4G data. I rarely even go above 1GB. I would kill to have just 1GB of data for only $10 a month.

T-Mobile doesn't have "contracts" any more. Everything is effectively a prepaid plan, no cancellation fees

It also works on any 3G tablet that supports T-mobile's frequencies. I successfully activated a SIM on my 2012 Nexus 7 (no LTE) and got the 200MB free per month. I'm not a current T-mobile customer.

I was using AT&T prepaid for 250MB/month. At least where I am in the Bay Area, T-Mobile actually had a better signal and speeds that were twice as fast. Good deal all around.

200 MB is nothing... I have a prepaid T-Mobile "Mobile Hotspot" and it's $50 for 5 GB which runs out in 2 months from the date of purchase. I was spending $100 a month and it was a burn. I stopped using it because it appeared that my connection was being throttled, as when I first got the device I was getting download speeds of nearly 1 MB/s, but after awhile (2 weeks?) I noticed that I rarely saw download speeds greater than 100 KBytes/s. When I complained to customer care they said some BS about "Backhaul" (NSA Back Hall?) and that my area was a fringe coverage zone, which I doubt due to my initial assessment of speeds.

I also had a Sprint PCS phone on an "Unlimited Talk Text & Web" prepaid plan ($45 monthly) which I would tether to my netbook. (against ToU) Sprint cut me off after they noticed that I used 20+ GB data in less than 3 weeks, but it took them awhile to notice that I was tethering.

I'm always wary of 'for life' claims.

A few years back Three in the UK did a 'free Skype calls for life' promotion to encourage 3g take-up, of course they have now stopped honouring that promise

Note that this is for the "life" of the device so we're likely only talking a few years for most people.

I agree, but there's little downside when it's free. If you use this and they cut it off a few years later, you've lost nothing.

You have lost something if :

- you paid more for the plan than you otherwise would have - went through "early adopter" pains as three rolled out - weaved Skype into your business/personal processes, and now have to pay for it, whereas you may have taken another route if the offer were not available - based financial arrangements around having it available for free - factor in the time for finding/learning something new and converting your contacts to it if you now abandon skype.

I was able to order the nano SIM card for FREE from the tmobile website

-- http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-phone/T-Mobile-Na...

news: http://www.androidcentral.com/t-mobile-prepaid-sim-cards-cur...

200mb free plan is not available to business accounts.

As a SaaS who's customers sometimes purchase iPads for an entire small business team, I was dismayed to learn this from a Tmob sales rep.

This is interesting. Can you use the SIM in some other project?

Here's the use case: there are applications where some sensor needs to communicate its readings at a very low bandwidth (say, < 10B per second). It would be great if a $10 SIM would allow me to place this sensor anywhere, and not just within range of WiFi.

In Ireland you get free unlimited mobile data, if you top-up 20 euro each month on prepaid. Last month I used 35GB.

In England, £15 unlimited data with lots of calls and texts, prepaid. Loved it.

But not everywhere in Europe is great. Germany sucks with soft-caps everywhere and throttling to useless 64 kbit/s after 500 MB or so on prepaid plans, and postpaid plans aren’t much better. Plus, the most you can get before some sort of soft-cap kicks in is something like 10 GB or so.

Unlimited plans straight up do not exist in Germany (only that soft-cap crap), no matter how much you want to pay and the soft-caps kick in obscenely early if you are not willing to pay a lot of money.

The sad part is that 200 MB is considered something ... that it is a sale point is even worse.

Mobile has stagnated brutally.

Haven't done the math, but it seems like I could check my GMail pretty regularly on 200mb/month, no? For that and the occasional I'm-lost-helpme-GMaps situation, I'm somewhat tempted by this offer.

I'm a private pilot who bought the LTE-enabled iPad in order to get the GPS chip built in. I don't use AT&T's SIM that was included.

For me, this means I can check TFRs/METARs/etc before I fly in Foreflight without dealing with tethering each time. It'll also let me evaluate T-Mobile's coverage.

Since the starter kit on the TM site is $1, I'm gonna go ahead and give it a whirl.

Update: That's it. $1 out the door, up and running.

Browsing reddit for hours only used a couple of megabytes for me. Of course, that was before it turned into a picture meme-dump.

That's what, about a half hour of video streaming at 3G speeds?

Only about 10 minutes of streaming HD video.

Or about 50,000 emails, or 1,000 websites (gzip compressed), or 50 Google searches every single day, or a hi-res photo of your loved ones every morning you wake up, or the confidence of never getting lost again.

I know you're being sarcastic, but for several years I was on a t-mobile plan with 200MB per month limit on my Nexus S, and I used without worry and only went over the limit once.

200MB? thats just one email from my mother with some pics.

What email service do you use that allows 200mb?

Who are the "qualified customers" for $0 iPads?

They're not offering $0 iPads, they're offering $0 down payment on 24 months financing. Qualified customer means you don't have bad credit when they pull your report.

> T-Mobile will offer iPad Air starting at an introductory price of $0 down with 24 equal monthly payments of $26.25* for the 16 GB model; iPad mini with Retina display starting at an introductory price of $0 down with 24 equal monthly payments of $22.08* for the 16 GB model; and iPad mini starting at an introductory price of $0 down with 24 equal monthly payments of $17.91* for the 16 GB model (plus taxes & fees). T-Mobile will also offer a program enabling customers to make their new iPad even more affordable by applying the trade-in value of an eligible tablet, even if that old tablet is Wi-Fi only.

Do I need a T-mobile phone with data to use this offer?

wow 200MB, someone should tell t-mobile what year it is. i think they are stuck somewhere in 199x

It's 200mb absolutely free, if you want more you're welcome to pay them, or anyone else, to get more.

if you block images and javascript, 200mb can load lots of web pages

so, almost enough data to support the enormous 'by default' internet consumption of iOS.

certainly little enough that everyone will pay for more internets.

clever marketing strategy. people like free stuff. :)

If I put this in my iPad and go abroad, what will happen?

Wish T-Mobile came over to Canada and take Wind Mobile.

I think T-Mobile was the inspiration for Koodo, Virgin Mobile Canada, and all the others which in the last few years have issued enough competition to take my phone bill from $95/mo to $35/mo. Hopefully they'll copy this new move, too.

Except Koodo, Virgin and Fido have always been owned and operated by the big three, just targeted towards customers with smaller budgets. It's just the illusion of competition.

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