Small and medium businesses have also started benefiting from the intense price competition in the US market. Last year, all major carriers in the country halved their mobile data prices in their bid to retain their customers and meet the increasing data consumption among their subscribers. The advent of mobile video content, and the increasing dependency on mobile services including voice and messaging over data, mobile gaming and mobile commerce and most importantly, the rise in 4G LTE coverage sees continuous increase in the amount of data consumed by most people with mobile data plans. As the need for data surges, price cuts saw sharp increases in total data that is consumed and sparked off a series of tariff cuts by Operators. Other features introduced towards the end of last year that gave more data to consumers is the data stash by T-Mobile, data rollover by AT&T and extension of monthly data quota by Verizon to 3 months, all allowing customers to bring forward unused data to their next bill cycles, allowing them to use their balances when the need arises.
This year, T-Mobile has started a fresh round of tariff cuts, this time, for small and medium businesses. In its true 'Un-carrier' fashion, T-Mobile has recently unveiled the Un-carrier 9.0, ‘Un-carrier for Business’, targeting small to midsize businesses offering mobile plans for employees. Promising a 40 percent lower than similar business plans from AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile's new discount programs are also extended to families of business people.
With T-Mobile’s new flexible rate plan, Un-carrier 9 offers small companies ten lines for $160, while SMEs can enjoy $15 per line for 20 lines up to1000 lines and large enterprises pay $10 per line for 1000 lines and above. All these lines come with 1GB LTE data, plus unlimited talk and text, said T-Mobile, and unlimited data after the 1GB, at a throttled down speed. Additional data can be purchased per line or pooled and distributed between many employees. Pooled data costs $4.75 per GB at a 100GB minimum and drops to $4.25GB at 1TB. T-Mobile also gives options to purchase unlimited data for $30/line or 2GB of data for $10/line.
To make the proposition more attractive to businesses, T-Mobile is also partnering with GoDaddy to offer a free .com domain and a website for customers, allowing them to speed up their online presence. According to T-Mobile, big carriers rake in over $80 billion in revenues annually from US businesses − about half the carriers’ total wireless revenues. By providing cost effective plans for small and medium businesses, the carrier says that both these entities will be able to retain their competitive advantage vis-a-vis bigger players who have access to better resources to negotiate more favorable terms of service for their organizations.
We’re going to do for businesses, what we’ve already been doing for consumers. 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.
Mike Sievert, COO, T-Mobile
Now, your average American business − with or without the resources to negotiate against the gargantuan carriers − can save more than $5,100 on 20 lines over two years, which is a big deal for most small business owners. But imagine the billions in savings for the millions of American businesses impacted by the carriers’ complete lack of transparency. That’s the real magnitude of today’s news. And that’s huge.
