T-Mobile Home Internet Pilot Opens: 50Mbps Over LTE, No Data Caps, $50/Month
Today, T-Mobile has announced an extremely limited pilot program that will be available to eligible U.S. households. T-Mobile Home Internet will be offered – at least initially – to 50,000 households and provides fixed, 4G LTE data to customers at speeds of up to 50Mbps. More importantly, T-Mobile says that it will offers these data speeds with no data caps, which has traditionally been the downfall of such service packages in the past.
T-Mobile’s plan is to offer this service in rural and other underserved areas of the U.S. that don’t already have reliable access to broadband service. According to T-Mobile, 76 percent of rural households either don’t have access to high-speed internet service or only have one provider to choose from.
“While virtually all other services in America’s telecom, internet, and tech sectors have exhibited declining prices, improved service, and expanded coverage, fixed broadband service stands out in contrast as the gigantic sore thumb,” said T-Mobile CEO John Legere. “All the big guys – Charter and Comcast and AT&T and Verizon – seem to be playing nice with each other and never stray into each other’s turf.”
T-Mobile Home Internet will be offered at a price of $50 per month (with AutoPay enabled), and there are no other hidden fees tacked on to the price. In addition, customers aren’t tied into a contract, as is often the case with home wired broadband.
While the initial pilot covering 50,000 households only represents 0.04 percent of all U.S. households, T-Mobile hopes to be able to offer service to half of the U.S. population by 2024. By this time, the service will have been upgraded to support 5G and will see speeds more than double to over 100Mbps.
For now, T-Mobile Home Internet is available on an invite-only basis for a limited group of current T-Mobile customers.