T-Mobile announced its Un-Carrier 9 intiative in New York City to make phone plans simpler for smaller businesses.
The magenta-hued company's brash CEO John Legere came onstage to dish the details, which boil down to a simpler pricing structure free of the haggling and negotiating business owners might face from AT&T and Verizon. Instead, T-Mobile promises transparency and simplicity with the "best price" being the "only price." Those pricing plans include 10 to 19 phones lines for $16 per line per month, 20-plus lines for $15 per line per month and 1000-plus lines for $10 per line per month. Each line comes with 1 GB of data and unlimited voice minutes and text messages, and if you want to add more data it's an extra $10 per gigabyte per month per line.
That's a stark contrast to AT&T and Verizon's method of dealing with business owners which involves starting at the highest price and haggling downards. The discounts could vary greatly from business to business, if there are any.
"We're going to do for businesses, what we've already been doing for consumers," Legere said. "Eliminate pain points and force change. The majority of US businesses - a full 99.7% - have less than 500 employees and don't have the money or resources to waste debating, negotiating and deciphering the carriers' hidden pricing. Today, we're upending how business buys wireless with 100% transparent pricing, the best rates, business family discounts, and more."
Legere also announced that clients can buy per line or buy a "pooled" option for more data. Or clients can pick and choose. If you have 42 employees and four of them use a lot more data, you can buy extra data for those four with no coverages, no contracts, no data access fee, and access to global data roaming, in-flight texting and T-Mobile's "data stash" that allows your data to carry over from month to month.
Not only that, but after explaining that most smaller businesses don't have a footprint on the Web, Legere announced that clients that sign up with T-Mobile can receive a free custom domain and mobile-friendly website courtesy of Go Daddy.com. Plus, clients will receive a free custom email powered by Microsoft Office 365, so that Roger at Mom & Pop Store can register a roger@momandpop.com email to use for his business.
To top the day off, Legere announced a discount option with up to 50% in savings for employees with families. He also mentioned during a Q&A that a specialized care center at T-Mobile will operate "24/7" to make switching carriers easy for businesses.
