T-Mobile Responds To Sprint's New Plans By Quadrupling 'Simple Starter' Data For $5 Per Month

The wireless price wars have begun. Sprint fired off the first shot when it rolled out new Family and Individual plans last week, and now T-Mobile, the nation's fourth largest wireless carrier and former acquisition target of Sprint, is firing back with a deal of its own -- for $5 extra per month, Simple Starter customers can quadruple their 4G LTE data cap to 2GB.

"People who use loads of data use T-Mobile," said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. "And it’s no wonder. The old guard telecoms punish people for using more data on their networks with crazy overage charges and fees. Get Verizon’s $50 plan and use just one gig more data, and the price jumps to $65. It’s crazy. At T-Mobile, we designed our network data-strong so our customers could use the hell out of it. And that’s just what they’re doing."

T-Mobile

T-Mobile's Simple Starter plan is relatively new. The wireless carrier rolled it out in May as an entry-level solution with unlimited talk and text, and 500MB of LTE data for $40. Beginning September 3, Simple Starter customers can fork over an additional $5 per month for 2GB of LTE data, with no annual service contract and no domestic overage fees if they exceed their cap. In the absence of overages, T-Mobile simply throttles LTE data connections once the allotted amount of a data has been reached.

Prior to this announcement, T-Mobile last week issued a call urging its customers to "rescue beleaguered Sprint" subscribers. The deal works by having Simple Choice subscribers convince Sprint customers to make the switch, and if they do, both will receive unlimited LTE data for a full year at no extra cost.