Final 'uncarrier' move of the month has T-Mobile doing away with data overage charges and petitioning its competitors to do the same.

Sarah Thomas, Director, Women in Comms

April 14, 2014

1 Min Read
T-Mobile Petitions Operators to Kill Overages

For its latest trick, T-Mobile says it will abolish domestic data, text, and voice overage charges for all its customers on any plan, and it's calling on its competitors to do the same.

T-Mobile US Inc. announced the move on Monday, the third of its latest round of "uncarrier" moves. Last week, the carrier also introduced a $40 500MB data plan and reduced the price of the LTE iPad to WiFi levels. Killing overage charges is its final act for what could be seen as version 5.0 in its sequence of uncarrier shake-ups. (See T-Mobile Drops LTE iPad Prices to WiFi Levels and Look Inside T-Mobile's 'Uncarrier' Transformation.)

Overage charges -- fees incurred when subscribers go over their allotment of monthly data -- can add up quickly. T-Mobile CEO John Legere said Monday that more than 20 million Americans were hit with overage charges in 2013, making $1 billion for AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), Verizon Wireless , and Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) combined.

He's doing away with the charges for all of T-Mobile's customers on domestic voice, text, and data plans. T-Mobile already started down this road with its Simple Choice plans that include unlimited voice and text and throttle speeds rather than charge when the data cap is reached. (See T-Mobile Shuns Overage Charges.)

The T-Mobile chief has also started a petition imploring its three competitors to do join him in killing overages. Nearly 400 people had signed the petition at our latest check.

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Sarah Thomas

Director, Women in Comms

Sarah Thomas's love affair with communications began in 2003 when she bought her first cellphone, a pink RAZR, which she duly "bedazzled" with the help of superglue and her dad.

She joined the editorial staff at Light Reading in 2010 and has been covering mobile technologies ever since. Sarah got her start covering telecom in 2007 at Telephony, later Connected Planet, may it rest in peace. Her non-telecom work experience includes a brief foray into public relations at Fleishman-Hillard (her cussin' upset the clients) and a hodge-podge of internships, including spells at Ingram's (Kansas City's business magazine), American Spa magazine (where she was Chief Hot-Tub Correspondent), and the tweens' quiz bible, QuizFest, in NYC.

As Editorial Operations Director, a role she took on in January 2015, Sarah is responsible for the day-to-day management of the non-news content elements on Light Reading.

Sarah received her Bachelor's in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She lives in Chicago with her 3DTV, her iPad and a drawer full of smartphone cords.

Away from the world of telecom journalism, Sarah likes to dabble in monster truck racing, becoming part of Team Bigfoot in 2009.

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