Sprint's early upgrade program, One Up has been discontinued just after four months of inception. The discontinuation comes in the conjunction with its recent 'Framily' plans that the company announced on January 7.
One Up plan allowed customers to pay for their devices in installments over 24 months and offered an upgrade for the same after a year. Sprint's One Up plan was in response to early upgrade programs originally introduced by T-Mobile and werelater implemented by AT&T and Verizon Wireless too.
Initially, the deal that came with One Up plan appeared more tempting then the first early upgrade plan introduced by T-Mobile. However, the carrier was suffering from the delays in its network upgrade program and offered comparatively lower data speed than other carriers and failed to win over customers.
Sprint's new plan, Framlily announced at the CES 2014 allows subscribers to add friends and family members to avail a price break. Larger the number of people will be in the circle, bigger the savings will be.
However with 'Framily', Sprint will no longer be offering an option to an early upgrade without opting for unlimited data plan. "Sprint continues to offer customers an upgrade option with the Sprint Framily plan. For $20 per month, customers can buy up to unlimited data and the ability to upgrade their device every 12 months," the company said in a statement.
The $15 monthly discount on unlimited service can still be availed if you had signed up for the One Up program prior to January 9.
The basic plan of 'Framily' starts at $55 per month for unlimited talk, text and 1GB of data. For every person added in the circle, the amount goes down by $5 allowing total discount of $30 per line. Unlimited data can be availed at $20 per month per line with an option for annual upgrades.
Sprint is the third largest U.S. wireless network operator as of 2013 and served more than 54 million customers till the end of third quarter of 2013.