Not sure if anyone on here is still using sprint, but this is the last push I needed to hop off onto another carrier.
That’s correct you read it right. Starting on January 30th Sprint will be charging $10 extra for all smart phones! This is definitely going to make some people very upset and I am sure some will want to get out of their contract. However that is not going to be possible, because if you currently have a smart phone then you will not be charged the fee. However if you upgrade, get a new line, or do an esn swap you will then be charged the $10 fee. Read after the break for full details on the new fee.
Why The Fee:
To continue to offer simple and affordable unlimited data plans for customers while maintaining a wireless network able to meet the needs of the growing appetite for data usage, the $10 premium data charge is necassary.
More than half of Sprint’s post paid customers in 3rd quarter of last year bought were smart phones.
What Devices Are Impacted:
All smart phones on the CDMA, iDEN, and 4G networks (A smart phone is any device with a robust operating system such as Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm Web OS and Instinct by Samsung)
Which Customers Are Impacted:
All customers activating a new smart phone or upgrading/swapping to a smart phone starting January 30th. This includes all consumer IL, business IL, and most CL customers.
I just want to understand people’s logic of buying a advanced smartphone and not wanting to pay for data… Its like buying a car and not wanting to pay for gas.
I don’t care how many upcharges or fees there are… only what the final bill looks like. So this thread with worthless without some comparative data to other carriers.
My girlfriend moved to Virgin Mobile (owned by sprint) a few months back. She is using an android phone. The plan is for a bunch of minutes, unlimited data, text, gps, etc… Bill is $40 per month.
The only gotcha with Virgin is they do not have roaming if you get off the sprint network. A regular sprint customer would roam on a verizon network, but virgin just gives no reception in those areas.
$40? Must have the additional minutes plan?. I switched my wife to VM and their android phone and the bill is $27.19/month after the fees. Unlimited txt + data and 300 minutes.
We went up to the northern border of NY and Quebec a couple weeks ago and she lost signal once we got about an hour north of the 1000 Islands. Around here is seems to work fine though.
Ya never understood this either. They are also 1 price and you get it across all your devices. They don’t go away and aren’t monthly costs like the old Verizon apps used to be on the BREW phones that would charge you $2 a month.
No not quite… Right now I have a touch pro 2 as a primary device and when that breaks (a lot) I have an HTC snap as a backup. If something were to happen to my TP2 when I go to activate the snap, even though that phone is 2-3 years old they are going to tack on an extra 10/month. OR if I use the insurance, when I activate the new (see also:refurb) TP2 even though its the same model, they will up it 10/month. That is whats bothering me. They have a program in place where you can opt for an extra 10/month and jump on the android devices and soon WP7 OR you can do an extra 20/month to get an iconic device (EVO/EPIC) which is most likely what I will end up doing if the plan pricing on the vzw iphone is outrageous.
So my plan is to ride out my touch pro 2 which has been unlocked and flashed and is much more enjoyable now until the verizon iphone comes out and then make my decision whether I am going to upgrade my plan and get an EVO or switch to big red and get the iphone… I can get discounts at both carriers… and I realized years ago when I signed up there would come a day when they would try to phase these plans out and get people on higher priced plans.
More or less I just wanted to bring this up to users that might not have caught it… Especially because I know there were quite a few SERO users on here at one time or another and right now sprint is making a big push to get people off those plans (with good cause because they are heavily discounted).
I support the mandatory data on the smartphones but the smartphone definition is pretty broad. I wish they had a way to buy a LG or Samsung phone that doesn’t run Android/WebOS and not have the data plan for the really basic users who make calls and text. There was some phones my mom was looking at on Verizon that were considered smart phones but that was arguable compared to the more advanced line of phones out there.
I’m still on the old school sero plan, I think I’ll be looking into that virgin mobile deal when it’s time for a new phone. I don’t use half the feature of my “smartphone” like I used to, I basically text and I’ve never gone over 100 talk minutes per month.
I agree with this. I have the LG Chocolate Touch, and have to have the $9.99 data package on it to use it. Between my Fiance and I (she has one too) that’s $19.98/month for something that is essentially useless to me, since I don’t browse apps, and have only checked my email 3 times in the last year with it. I like the touchscreen aspect of it and the ease of entering messages, but I am really considering just getting basic phones to replace these for now. I wouldn’t mind upgrading to an Android phone in the future, but that would also replace 80% of what i do on the computer, so I wouldn’t have to take it with me when I went places.
