Walmart Family Mobile family plan powered by T-Mobile hitting stores?

We have just been informed that Walmart is about to launch a new unlimited family plan service in stores. It is a partnership with T-Mobile, and the plans are supposed to offer unlimited minutes, unlimited shared data, unlimited text messages, no “surprise charges” and the ability to upgrade at any time with no fee with no contract. One of the phones available for this service is the Samsung Highlight. We’ll report more as we get it…

Tags: exclusive, Highlight, minutes, Samsung, T-Mobile, text, Unlimited, Walmart

Comments

First

first
sirpaul

Kids are more expensive than ever.

PAPINYC

There’s a better family plan out there since ‘Kids are more expensive than ever’, it’s called Birth Control.

Tony

Not if you’re Catholic..
Vinniemac

If you want to be a self-worshiping hedonist and make a mockery of the covenantal sign of a marriage, then by all means use contraception. Don’t expect to hear “Well done good and faithful servant” at the end of your life, however. (Yes, I’m Catholic.)
Steel

Self-worshiping hedonist, you know, as opposed to those people w/ 6 kids by 3 different moms. The Faithful.
PAPINYC

@Steel
Righto’ Superman. But you should have ended this way: the faithfully stupid who raise their youngins’ with W.I.C. coupons, because welfare is not enough, and then complain that their cell bill is too expensive.
Tony

@Vinniemac
“Believe what I say or BURRNNNN forever!!!1!!1”
Typical. And sad.
JDE

@Tony: ““Believe what I say or BURRNNNN forever!!!1!!1″
Typical. And sad.”

I’d express it more simply:

Imbecile.

brianw

What breaking news for a sunday! Two, three articles all weekend? You guys alright over there? Isn’t that 4 or 5 more than usual?
matt

This changes everything.
Swagger

Go New York Giants!!!

PAPINYC

They don’t like your comment because the Giants color isn’t Red or they can’t send a live video feed using Facetime since, there’s no Wi-fi at the stadium.

Swagger

Word. These cats are a bunch of haters.

Jason

“…the ability to upgrade at any time”? Upgrade to what? Unless there’s a service plan that I’m not aware of that includes hookers and blow there is nothing to upgrade to once you have unlimited talk/text/data.

Dan

The question isn’t “upgrade to what” but “upgrade at what cost?” All carriers allow you to purchase new equipment at any time, just without a subsidized price.

This sounds like the latest Nexus One ….
Sandi

Upgrade your phone!!! Duh

Carmen

If there is no contract, there won’t be any subsidized devices. Therefore you can go anywhere to buy any compatible device and use it. It wouldn’t have anything to do with your plan or carrier.

diar

i assume by upgrade, they mean upgrade phones at any time. if so, this is a game changer. that’s the thing i wish for most. the ability to buy a new phone anytime. I like a lot of t-mobile’s moves lately. charging less for no-contract plans, offering the ability to pay for off-contract phones over several months, getting a better phone selection, and now this. when the G2 drops i’m switching.

Carmen

I agree, it’s the way that it should be. However, anyone can upgrade phones at any time with any carrier. They just won’t get a subsidy. If you’ve looked at T-Mobile’s phone pricing, it would shock most Americans. We are used to seeing phones subsidized. i.e. a BlackBerry Curve for $29. This doesn’t really happens in other parts of the world, like most of Europe. The plans are way more straightforward, and it’s a lot easier to manage a family plan. But people will still get suckered in to a plan with Verizon or AT&T by one of their attractive subsidies, not to mention the superior coverage.

Chellykay88

If only TMO had better coverage..,

Deaconclgi

Where do you live? I live in the surrounding Atlanta area and I get 5-8Mbps downloads on 3.5G (N900) with excellent coverage. Every place that I have been that sells T-moble service has had good coverage, from 2G, 2.5G, 3.G and 3.5G from Florida to Ohio. Now, in the boonies and places that don’t know what tmoble is, Tmobiles coverage is as scarce as a pay phone…….I do know of 2 paricular dead zones……..

Erik

I live in Chesapeake, Va and my coverage varies from great to no service within an eight mile area, between my work and home. I still love T-Mobile, just wish the coverage here was as good as I have seen elsewhere for them.
Sean

What part of Chesapeake you Erik I live in Portsmouth and I go all over Hampton Roads from the Beach to D.C. never have a problem with coverage!

jaymax

Where exactly do you believe TMO to be lacking coverage. Was in BFE South Dakota in July and had great voice/data coverage. Ditto for Montana.

Please be specific or shut the fuck up.

bonesb

I’m in Portland OR, but travel a bit as a consultant, I’d pick up TMo but for the holes in their coverage in the PNW. Not being picky, TMo has holes in their coverage in OR and WA that are bigger than several states.

I was surprised to pick up ATTWS 3G coverage and VZW in the middle of Klickitat Co, near Mt. Adams – and the VZW signal was actually USCC. The real estate agent was “searching…” on his TMo PDA. TMo’s made the most significant leaps in service in the PNW, tho, got to give them props for that.
Delusion FTL

What you really need to decide is not who has the best coverage as that’s not up for debate. What you need to decide is if you need that coverage over what you would save.

Tmo is generally ~500-800 dollars cheaper over a two year period vs VZW.

Is it worth that money for random areas of coverage in the middle of nowhere? If yes then spend away and use VZW. If it’s not then consider saving a huge chunk of money and forget about it.

The sad thing is that I’d wager ~66% or more of VZW’s 80-90 million customers, virtually never need coverage outside major metro’s but are too clueless to choose a carrier that would save them a chunk of money and provide a similar exp.
Shantanu

You generally will need coverage when you least expect it. I wouldn’t want to be traveling down the road in the middle of nowhere, break down, and be staring at a cell phone that says “no service”. That is why I choose Verizon.

HabibAKAJohn/Peter/Tom@SprintPOS

I have coverage everywhere I go, isn’t voice/text coverage the coverage that matters the to most families?

Salim

T-mo is a game changer. They are paving the way for cheaper/more competitive wireless phone services in USA. Keep up the good work!
ted

Yeah. It’s called prepay.
Mohammad

Yeah. T mobile’s unlimited data plan are also at $20 for smartphones & $5 for dumbphones. When I get a job next year, I’ll buy stocks on t mobile & red lobster. Anyone gone to that all you can eat shrimp deal yet?
Deee Lite

Interesting.

Hopefully we’ll get more details on this. I want to know if roaming off network is prohibited and whether or not they’ll be ridiculously low data caps?

This might be the family data plan answer I was looking for especially if they’ll let us use any T-Mobile smartphone of our choice that we pay for on our own.
Kevin

T-Mobile is the first company to get Android – they are always considered the underdog, but they were changing the game all the way back with the Sidekick. I like this move and I think it’s just a shadow of bigger things to come!

Josh

I agree with the fact that T-Mobile was the first one to get an Android device. However, they failed to execute on it. Android became popular in the U.S. because of Verizon. If it wasn’t for the “Droid” effect, many people still wouldn’t know what Android was. So when it comes to Android, I give Verizon props.

HabibAKAJohn/Peter/Tom@SprintPOS

If it wasn’t for T-Mobile DROID would never exist so just pay homage to T-Mobile and leave it at that.
Josh

T-Mobile didn’t create Android. Android was made by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. The Android OS became popular because of Verizon’s efforts. Main example was to license the name “Droid” from LucasFilm. They also spent millions of dollars advertising the original Droid. So as far as I know, the Android OS’ success in the U.S. was because of Verizon.

Chellykay88

Yes TMO has better plans than Att and vzw but they have to do that to get customers. If u want to sacrifice coverage for cheap plans you get TMO or sprint. If you want more nationwide coverage you get Att or vzw. All you need to do is look at the coverage maps of each respective carrier to know this. I live in the Midwest. Att and vzw are big here. I like to travel so I want a carrier whose coverage isn’t spotty. That’s not me being a hater. That’s being smart bc I don’t want to pay monthly for a phone and not have enough bars to use it.
http://justskate.me netposer

If this is true it’s about time someone is offering shared data. Not sure why you can share minutes and SMS but not data. Data seems the more obvious choice since it’s very difficult for an end user to figure out how much data certain tasks use.

Minutes and text messages are obvious. Talk for 10 minutes and you can bet you used about 10 minutes of your voice plan.

Download and app, browse for a few minutes, check your email…how much data did you just use? Who knows.

Maybe the manufacturers and the carriers should add a MB meter at the top of each phone next to the clock or other icons that keeps a running tab of your data usage?

EffinRox

Most handsets have a kb/mb log on them. These are resettable and are “approximate”. The same as call timers.

stu

Ok for the last comment you should check out sprint as I can view how much data I have used every day…not that it matters as I have a true unlimited use of data! As for the rest of the comments the one thing you are leaving out here is tmo is only the backbone…this is going to be another money maker for Walmart and I guarantee you they know how to make money! It will be very interesting to see the caps and just how much they will be charging for phones! Especially when people start buying phones every month and they realize there’s a reason major carriers do a subsidy every two years!

http://justskate.me netposer

stu, I realize you can check your data but it’s not in real time and you have to have an app or visit the carriers website.

It would be nice to have some sort of overlay on the app/browser/email that shows the number go up as the page is downloading etc.

wam

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100913/ap_on_hi_te/us_wal_mart_wireless_service

not sure what to think.
SMS

Before you get too excited, realize that T-Mobile’s native coverage is extremely limited compared to Verizon’s native coverage (which is what you get on StraightTalk).

T-Mobile has been removing vast amounts of AT&T roaming coverage over the past year as roaming agreements have ended and have not been renewed. Even if ‘Family Mobile’ allows the same roaming coverage as T-Mobile (which is doubtful), the coverage will still be far worse than what you’d get on StraightTalk unlimited.

The advantage of Family Mobile is that you can use any GSM phone that is unlocked (or locked to T-Mobile), so you’re not limited to the poor selection of phones that StraightTalk offers. Also, tethering should be very easy on Family Mobile.

If you never leave urban areas then you can get by with T-Mobile coverage, but it really is very very limited coverage.

Coverage

“If you never leave urban areas then you can get by with T-Mobile coverage, but it really is very very limited coverage.”

I guess you forgot about the regional GSM carriers still out there like i Wireless in Iowa. AT&T and T-Mobile have very few of their own towers in IA, so if you have EITHER national carrier and cross IA you will mostly be roaming on i Wireless. Granted, if you roam more than 50% of the time on most carriers, they will give you the boot.

T-Mobile’s coverage is sufficient for a majority of the USA population, especially with roaming on other GSM carriers and/or UMA for indoor coverage.

So if this plan does have full roaming privileges in at least the USA, then it is good alternative to T-Mobile + plans.

SMS

Walmart now has the coverage map up, and they clearly _are_ allowing the same roaming that regular T-Mobile service offers. Still, most AT&T coverage is not available which can be a big problem in some areas, such as the San Francisco Bay Area.