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T-Mobile One free line promotion ratchets pricing pressure against rivals

Tied – but not limited to – the recent launch of Apple iPhone 7 devices, T-Mobile US rolls out One rate plan promotion with “free” line of service

T-Mobile US’ freshly launched – and updated – “One” rate plan is receiving an early price cut promotion, which the carrier is tying to the launch of the Apple iPhone 7 lineup, though is not required to get the rate plan discount.

The “limited time” offer provides four lines of service under the One rate plan for the price of three lines, which cuts the cost to $140 per month before taxes, or as the carrier touts, $35 per line. The pricing does include the $5 per line discount for signing up for automatic bill pay.

The One rate plan includes unlimited domestic voice calling, text messaging, on-network LTE data and mobile hot spot service at 2G network speeds. T-Mobile US reserves the right to limit network speeds for customers using in excess of 26 gigabytes of data per month.

The plan was initially announced last month, with the intention for commercial availability on Sept. 6. T-Mobile US pushed up the launch date and added a premium “One Plus” option soon after Sprint launched a similar rate plan under the “Unlimited Freedom” brand.

T-Mobile US has said it plans to eventually focus new customer additions to the new One and One Plus plans at the expense of its tiered data plans.

“This is not a rate plan announcement,” said T-Mobile US CEO John Legere, on a Periscope-based session following the rate plan unveiling. “We’re not sticking it forever alongside all the rest of the things that we do. This is where we are going. It’s called T-Mobile One. It’s one plan that we will go to. … We still are for the time being going to sell our existing plans. But, we are going to move away from them.”

Those intentions are becoming more clear as the carrier’s website has made finding a still available tiered data bucket more challenging. T-Mobile US received some grief for the new plans as consumers found the lack of data package options stifling.

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