MetroPCS, a prepaid brand owned by T-Mobile, has announced that it is bringing its parent company's hottest, newest features to its own plans.
In a press release, T-Mobile CEO John Legere says MetroPCS will start offering unlimited music streaming to all customers on a 3 GB plan and above, without the data counting against the amount of data already allotted to customer plans. Dubbed Music Unlimited, this is essentially the same thing as T-Mobile's Music Freedom, which the Uncarrier introduced earlier this year to a lot of fanfare.
T-Mobile says most customers easily consume 2 GB of high-speed 4G LTE data by the time they are on the third week of the month, and so offering MetroPCS Music Unlimited will provide users with more data to use for their other online activities. The service will be able to stream music from 33 music streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Pandora and iHeartRadio, with more services to come.
MetroPCS also announced Data Maximizer, a new feature that uses the same technology as T-Mobile's recently announced Binge On. Data Maximizer will not offer unlimited video streaming for free, but it will optimize mobile screens to reduce data while still ensuring that the video is of DVD quality. This should be enough to increase video streaming by three times, says T-Mobile. MetroPCS won't guarantee high-quality videos though, since it offers customers the option to turn of Data Maximizer when video quality isn't good enough.
"Once again, we are setting MetroPCS apart from the rest of the pack in ways that no one else will," says Legere in his usual fiery way. "MetroPCS is the No. 1 brand in prepaid because we keep giving customers more of what they want, and today that means adding Music Unlimited and Data Maximizer to the list! Their data will last longer than ever before without ridiculous penalty fees or trickery!"
On top of the new features, MetroPCS is also throwing in an additional 1 GB of 4G data to its plans and another 2 GB for mobile hotspot tethering for the $55 a month unlimited data plan, bumping it up from 6 GB to 8 GB. Other plans now start at $25 a month for 1 GB of 4G data with Data Maximizer but not Music Unlimited, while the original $30 plan with 2 GB of 4G data is now $35 with 3 GB of data and the $40 plan with 4 GB of data is now $45 with 5 GB. All MetroPCS plans except for the $25 plan offer Music Unlimited and Data Maximizer.
Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr
