After months of guessing, leaks, hints, and no doubt late night prayers from the hopeful, T-Mobile finally clarified the details of their new relationship with Apple. The iPhone 5 will be the first Apple phone to be made available on T-Mobile through their new UNcarrier plans. The best part — you’ll only be paying $99 up front.
Dealing with your carrier today is not a pleasant experience. Calling or waling into a store to talk to someone about changing your contract can cause panic attack in some, the experience is so frustrating. It’s not an accident either, especially here in the US. Keeping users locked into the same rate for two years is what every business should want. All but guaranteed money for two years, with little or no reason to leave for another carrier, since you know they aren’t any different. This mindset changed significantly with the release of the iPhone, where users were willing to cancel their contracts just to switch to the carrier that offered the hardware. After years of this, some clever customers figured out that you could just buy an iPhone outright and take it to another carrier if you weren’t happy. After April 12, the iPhone will be available on all four US carriers, so that won’t be an issue anymore.
T-Mobile’s new UNcarrier plans focus on offering the customer a choice between paying for a phone upfront or paying for it over 24 months, and not a contract in sight. This flexibility allows T-mobile the ability to offer Apple’s latest smartphone for $100 less then any of their competitors upfront, and then allow the user to pay $20 per month for 24 months to make up the difference. This is the price that T-Mobile’s competition currently charges for the iPhone 4S, which will undoubtedly be an advertising point moving forward. As with any other phone on this new system, when you’ve paid the phone off entirely you can unlock the phone and move it wherever you choose. It’s not clear how easy it would be to move an iPhone 5 from T-Mobile to another carrier just yet, but it’s possible that Apple’s verbose radio in the latest iPhone will support a seamless transition to AT&T without losing any calling or data functionality.
With monthly plans starting as low as $30 per month, T-Mobile’s new plans make owning an iPhone 5 on their network over any other a pretty obvious choice. Especially if you’re in one of the major cities where T-Mobile LTE is rolling out, the shift from an iPhone on any other carrier to T-Mobile would be a pretty big deal. T-Mobile will have the phone starting April 12th in stores with no mention of a pre-order yet.
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