There are some valid reasons to criticize Verizon’s new “Share Everything” plans — the main one being that they don’t offer as much value as Verizon’s old unlimited data plan — but T-Mobile doesn’t have many of them. That didn’t stop the carrier from promoting an old blog post on its Twitter feed earlier this week that outlined the value of T-Mobile’s family plans compared with the shared plans of “some of their competitors.” While the post never mentioned Verizon by name, the fact that T-Mobile promoted this piece on the same day Verizon announced its shared plans makes it pretty clear that T-Mobile still thinks its points and conclusions are still valid. But does T-Mobile really offer “simple, unlimited data plans” that differ significantly from Verizon? Not quite.
The blog post, written by T-Mobile senior vice president of marketing Andrew Sherrard, made three claims. The first was that T-Mobile offers more flexible and affordable plans than the competition.
“At T-Mobile, customers have the option of only paying for the amount of data each member of the family believes they will need,” he wrote. “Customers can choose affordable, no-annual-contract data for tablets and other data-only products they share – paying every month or buying in daily or weekly installments.”
A Verizon customer service representative told me that users can add tablets that they already own to their Share Everything plans without having to sign a service agreement for them. The only time Verizon customers would have to sign a service agreement for tablets is when they’re buying tablets being subsidized at a lower price by Verizon. If a Verizon customer wants to pay full price for their new tablet, he or she can add it to a Share Everything plan with no service agreement. This is, not shockingly, the same as what T-Mobile offers: Subsidized tablets that require two-year contracts and unsubsidized tablets that don’t require any contracts.
Second, Sherrard claimed that T-Mobile offers “unlimited data plans” where “there is no surprise data cap or bill shock.” This is a legitimate point in T-Mobile’s favor, although it’s not as great as Sherrard made it out to be.
First, it’s true that T-Mobile’s HSPA+ customers never have to worry about overage fees on their services since they technically are allowed to consume an unlimited amount of data per month. But T-Mobile customers do have to worry about service degradation since T-Mobile knocks its HSPA+ customers down to slower speeds if they exceed their monthly data cap.
T-Mobile’s system is akin to an all-you-can-eat buffet that tells customers they have to wait two hours in between plates: technically people can eat as much as they want but they won’t be able to get it as quickly as they want.
And finally, Sherrard claims that T-Mobile customers get more from what they pay because they get free tethering services if they have data plans of more than 5GB of HSPA+ data.
“[W]ith a capable T-Mobile smartphone… customers can power up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices with fast, 4G data,” he wrote. “So rather than needing to account for each device on a shared family data plan, customers can use their existing data plan to power multiple devices, while still saving hundreds of dollars annually.”
From reading this, one would never guess that Verizon is actually offering complimentary tethering to all of its Share Everything customers, regardless of their monthly data cap. But this is the case: Verizon Share Everything plans ditch the $20 monthly tethering fee that the carrier traditionally charged.
OK, enough with fact-checking T-Mobile’s public relations verbiage for now. It’s time to do an apples-to-apples comparison between Verizon and T-Mobile by looking at two shared plans that offer roughly the same total package.
The first is T-Mobile’s “Classic Unlimited Plus” plan that delivers unlimited talk and SMS for two smartphones and a 2GB monthly HSPA+ data cap with no tethering that sells for around $140 per month. The equivalent of this for Verizon is a Share Everything plan that includes two smartphones with unlimited talk and text for $40 each ($80 total) and a 2GB data plan that charges $60 a month with free tethering included. The total for the Verizon plan, then, is… $140 per month!
Another one: T-Mobile’s “Classic Unlimited – Premium with Smartphone Mobile HotSpot Service” plan delivers unlimited voice and SMS for two smartphones along with 5GB of monthly HSPA+ data and free tethering for $170 per month. The Verizon Share Everything equivalent is two smartphones with unlimited voice and SMS ($40 each, $80 total) with a data plan of 6GB per month and free tethering that costs $80 a month. This brings the total for the Verizon plan to $160 a month, which is actually $10 cheaper than the closest T-Mobile equivalent despite the fact that the Verizon plan offers one extra gigabyte per month of LTE data.
So, other than offering users the assurance that they’ll never get whacked with data overage fees, does T-Mobile really have a case that its own family plans are better than Verizon’s? The answer appears to be, no.
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Nears, Now Up For Pre-order - PC World
Update: Since this was first written, Samsung contacted us saying that Amazon published the pre-order page in error, and we confirmed that the page has since been taken down. Samsung says it has not announced final specs, timing, or pricing for this product. The company also says that the information Amazon published "was not entirely accurate," but the company declined to say what wasn't correct.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Android tablet made quite an impression when it was first introduced back at the end of February during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. And now the Note appears to be nearing release in the U.S., if it's appearance on Amazon for pre-order is any indication. Up until now, Samsung has been quiet about its release plans, but the company often makes holiday season announcements in the mid-summer (July) timeframe, which would gel with the company's vague inferences of a summer release for the U.S. market.
At MWC, Samsung made it clear that the Galaxy Note 10.1 would be the company's flagship tablet release for the first half of the year; when the company announced its upcoming tablets at MWC, the Galaxy Note was clearly where Samsung was putting its biggest promotional efforts. Furthermore, the company made no mention of plans for a high-resolution display, as Acer and Asus had already done at CES, and Samsung has since been oddly quiet about what it may do about high-resolution tablet displays.
The big hook for the Note 10.1 is that it uses Samsung's S-Pen, like its little phone/tablet sibling before it. The tablet uses Wacom's technology to enable pen input, which would put the Galaxy Note 10.1 into a select group of tablets with a pen or stylus input, an important differentiator and a feature that has value for both productivity and creative input.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 available for pre-order differs slightly from what was first discussed a few months back at MWC, assuming the brief specs provided on the page are accurate. Most notably, the processor is now shown as a quad-core processor, which would be a notable, and necessary, upgrade from the dual-core 1.4-GHz CPU initially planned for on the Galaxy Note. Also, the tablet might seem pricey at $550, but then becomes a bit less so when you consider that the model shown for pre-order has 32GB of storage inside.
The big question that remains is whether the pen alone will help give this tablet a boost over the coming high-resolution displays. Apparently, based on the new information provided in the update above, we'll have to wait a bit longer to see how consumers react to a tablet with a pen, but no high-resolution display. In the meantime, Acer announced its Iconia Tab A700 this morning, and that model will cost just $450 for 32GB and a 1920 by 1200 pixel display. The A700 is due to ship later this month. Asus has been quiet about when to expect its high-res tablet, but earlier this year the company had vaguely indicated it planned a summer release.
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