Sprint: Smartphone Users Need to Pay $10 More

According to the leaked memo, if a customer perfoms an ESN change, the feature will get added on.

Does this mean if I have a blackberry tour and then get a Style for cheap on ebay and swap it out (so no in store purchase) the fee will auto ad?

Wow Sprint announces a price hike and boom 240+ comments. Sprint is still the best bang for your buck no matter how you slice it they beat the crap out of att and verizon and compete with tmobile on pricing. But blow tmobile out of the water in coverage and services! 😎

What I really hate about this is I wonder how long will it be before the other guy decide to follow suit? Sprint did this with pay per use text messaging rates as well. Next thing you knew...the other guys copied. Hell, Verizon was charging $44.99 for data and lowered the price to $29.99 for non-BES data plans. If Sprint were going to raise rates I wish they had added $10 to their rate plans across the board. This is likely going to be the beginning of a disturbing trend.

I can handle the 10.00 but the icing was also that no more premier status for me unless I of course spend more! so no more full upgrades at 1year plus when I call abt a billing question get the rudest ,stupidist ghetto reps. So much for there improved customer service. Plus my airave causes data problems half the time. Shall I go on in other words all the little things that made Sprint better to me over Tmobile there slowly taking away. Let's see what there supposed great announcement is supposed to be. Im gonna be more mad if they dont offer more WebOs devices. HpPalm already said that was Sprint's decision. And we all know Sprint is the sloooooowest at bringing out phones! in general. So it's not just the 10.00 charge!

It is still the best value, but what is Sprint thinking? This will impact it's users to the point where it may push usersaway in favor of other services who charge a few bucks more. I'm seriously thinking about switching over now, because even though I save a few dollars, this changes things drastically. 10 dollars a line on a five line family line is a huge increase. Sprint, please don't do this, you were just starting to see the daylight.....

the $10 won't be charged retroactively. Meaning if you've already upgraded your lines to androids, blackberries, etc you won't see your bill jump up $10 a line overnight,....you'll see it the NEXT time you upgrade.

That's not great news but its better than bills jumping up $50 for a family plan you upgraded to last month.

Get locked in at the current prices by the 29th of this month. It's going up for almost everyone after that.

Could this be in preparation for announcement of a new smartphone for Sprint?

If you watch the industry as a whole it is getting more expensive everyday. Customers are using more Data but the industry is fueling it, with a barrage of adds touting high bandwidth applications like streaming media and really fast networks.

If you look at various 4G speeds how long can you sustain streams at those speeds until you run out of data allocation? AT&T for example, who cares if you could pump data at 10MB/s if you can only do it for a 25 minutes in an entire month and your data has run out. Now no one is pushing 10MB/s on their network but the point is what good is having fast data when the quantity limits are small. In England for example you get 15GB for your Ipad for 25GBP per month (inclusive of ALL taxes a...
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Am I happy about this change? Nope, this is going to be a pain in the ass to explain and to try and reason with already unreasonable customers who think they're paying too much for what they feel entitled to for free.

Here's the thing; I get about 6-10 complaints a week, at least, about how "I don't live in a 4G area, how dare you charge me for it/no one else has to pay premium data, if I'm charged, everyone with a smartphone should too!"

Guess what? We listened.

Now all smartphone users have to pay the premium so we can keep the unlimited data as just that; unlimited.

But hey, raise enough of a fuss and throw enough of a hissyfit and we'll go Verizon's route and cap the data for you and you'll stay at the prices you have now.
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I am not thrilled with this new fee either so when I switch my phone will have to pay now that on fam plan all four of us wld be paying more not just my bro in law that got the shift. Yes Sprint is still cheaper etc of the contract players. But US cellular to me now has a more compelling package that I cant get of course. Oh well so is life. Sprint better be getting some of the new WebOs devices thats all I know! They make you almost choose between good rates and they are the slooooowest at launching devices. Tmo has a bigger selection.

Sprint:

450 anytime minutes
unlimited "Anymobile" (unless you are roaming)
unlimited Mobile to Mobile
unlimited texting
unlimited internet

TOTAL $80.00mo. (Smartphones)
$70.00mo (feature phones)

T-Mobile:

500 anytime minutes
no "Anymobile"
unlimited Mobile to Mobile
unlimited texting
unlimited internet

TOTAL: $80.00mo (smartphones)
$60.00mo (feature phones)

I guess Sprint still has a great value on minute packages, Anymobile is a pretty neat hat-trick, but this brings thier pricing in-line with T-Mobile.

Also, it's a LOT easier to just NOT get internet on T-Mobile.

Everyone should understand that this fee provides everyone with Unlimited Data plans as Sprint prepares for 4G Nationwide. With 4G speeds streaming Netflix could cause serious overages. Instead of paying for tiered data plans and overages above that, Sprint provides Unlimited Data PERIOD! Sprint competitors are provide tiered data and then charge for overages. $10 additional on Sprint gets you Unlimited DATA PERIOD! No overages or limits to worry about. Sprint is the better deal! 😁

MORE BANDWIDTH FOR ME!!!

Now maybe the Sprint fanboys with their 'Our data is the cheapest!' battle cries will pipe down.

Hopefully now Sprint will regain it's title has having the "Highest Churn In The Industry"!!! Cause T-Mo doesn't deserve it.

Everyone, relax. This isn't ending the world. This was a necessity, plain and simple.

The thing is, Sprint has been in the red for some time now. Some will argue that this has been a "on paper only" discussion, but, regardless, the effects are present. Their only options were to find a way to raise arpu or a way to decrease costs. Being CDMA without the clout backing of Verizon's 93 million customer base makes it difficult for them to achieve competitive handset prices. They have had a great deal of requisition charges resulting from previous quarter net loss (churn bites companies in the arse here. Layoffs, at this point, were not an option. They did reduce some overhead by "selling" their cell site infrastructure, but this wasn't...
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Remember the disagreement about who gets the $10 premium data charge? Clear says it should be charged to everyone and they get the money and Sprint said it should only be for WiMax customers in WiMax areas who can get 4G. I guess Clear gets the money after all.

To keep up with demand, they have to raise prices..

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/data-tsunami-and ... »

If you were looking to score a 2 year old Palm Pre, then this is pretty sad news.

Otherwise, you've already been paying this $10.00/month fee, because pretty much everyone who has purchased a Sprint smartphone has purchased one of Sprint's '4G' phones which already incur the charge. And chances are you've kept the 4G radio off 90% of the time because Sprint's 4G network is so bad it makes their 3G network look good.

And in reality, nobody's left on Sprint. Nobody really wants to switch to them either because they don't consistently provide state-of-the-art phones. The only bright spot in the past two years was the Pre (the last best-in-class phone you could argue they've offered). All they've banked on since then is the Evo, a phone...
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