Greetings everyone!
I did a lot of research in determining what service I was going to subscribe to for my mobile needs. Along the way, I compiled a lot of my data together and came up with a quick look at all of T-Mobile's plans comparatively. The results are rather surprising.
The first thing that I will mention here as a preface: T-Mobile's website and tech support staff say a lot of things that store managers aren't trained to know. Some examples are "You can bring your own phone or tablet to any of our plans," suggesting the ability to bring a smartphone onto a MBB package (which I have done and enjoy), or "All of our unlimited T-Mobile plans include Smartphone Mobile HotSpot Service for FREE", which technically would mean that the $30 Unlimited Data/100 minutes plan *should* have free tethering, however it's not programmed that way in their system. Be very careful about advertised programs on their website, they're quite misleading at times.
I used all high speed 3G HSPA+ and 4G LTE service for this analysis, both of which have no difference in price. This could change in the future as 4G technology changes to becoming consistently faster than 3G HSPA improvements. 2G lowered speeds are the norm for all of T-Mobile's plans in cases where there's an overage.
(In comparing the postpaid Simple plans to the data plans, I found that it's just a combination of $30 unlimited talk and text with $20 data, consistent with the rest of their plans. If you break it up like that, the metrics for bandwidth continue for the rest of their data packages on the Postpaid smartphone plans. Additionally, it is supported to use a smartphone on a MBB plan, just no one is going to tell you it is. There's a reference to it in the support documents, where it is mentioned that Smartphone Mobile Hotspot is supported on the Pay in Advance MBB plans.)
After doing comparisons on costs, I've discovered the best deals on mobile data are found in the Postpaid MBB 500, Prepaid MBB 1.5, and the Simple plan (500MB version). The simple plan is basically the same as the Postpaid MBB 500 option, so I omitted it below.
| Service | Data cap | Cost | Days | Tethering Cost | Cost per day | Cost per MB | Megabytes per day |
| Postpaid MBB 500 | 500 | $ 20.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 0.6667 | 0.0400 | 16.6667 |
| Prepaid MBB 1.5 | 1536 | $ 25.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 0.8333 | 0.0163 | 51.2000 |
| Postpaid MBB 2 | 2500 | $ 30.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 1.0000 | 0.0120 | 83.3333 |
| Prepaid MBB 3.5 | 3584 | $ 35.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 1.1667 | 0.0098 | 119.4667 |
| Postpaid MBB 4 | 4500 | $ 40.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 1.3333 | 0.0089 | 150.0000 |
| $30 Unlim. Data/100 | 5120 | $ 30.00 | 30 | $ 15.00 | 1.5000 | 0.0088 | 170.6667 |
| Prepaid MBB 5 | 5120 | $ 50.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 1.6667 | 0.0098 | 170.6667 |
| Postpaid MBB 6 | 6500 | $ 50.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 1.6667 | 0.0077 | 216.6667 |
| Postpaid MBB 8 | 8500 | $ 60.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 2.0000 | 0.0071 | 283.3333 |
| Prepaid MBB 300 | 300 | $ 15.00 | 7 | $ 0.00 | 2.1429 | 0.0500 | 42.8571 |
| Postpaid MBB 10 | 10500 | $ 70.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 2.3333 | 0.0067 | 350.0000 |
| Postpaid MBB 12 | 12500 | $ 80.00 | 30 | $ 0.00 | 2.6667 | 0.0064 | 416.6667 |
| PAYG $3/Day | 200 | $ 3.00 | 1 | $ 15.00 | 3.0000 | 0.0150 | 200.0000 |
Breaking up service into daily allotments and sorting by cost per day really shows exactly what's going on with their pricing. In my case, I wanted to compare the $30 unlimited data against the other plans, and was surprised to see that the MBB plans offered significantly greater value than the $30 plan, for less money, and with free tethering.
Now, before you get all hissy about using a MBB plan on a smartphone, you have to realize that T-Mobile's end doesn't distinguish technically between the two all that much, with the exceptions that the tethering check on HTTP headers isn't used, and on how the billing screen comes up on the website and in their terminals. Both Smartphone and MBB plans use the same APN and gateway information, same towers. The one major difference is that the MBB plans don't have calling enabled from the device, and most likely doesn't provision E911 either, however they CAN receive voicemails for some reason (clearable by going to 1803-MESSAGE from another number, setting up your mailbox on the MBB plan, and deleting the intro message.) If you call the phone number associated with a MBB inbound, the system tells you that the number has elected not to receive inbound calls (I suppose this option exists for phone plans too?). Only really do this if you have a dual SIM phone and can benefit from the reduced calling rates on the other sim.
It's also very interesting that the $3/day option costs less per MB than the Prepaid 1.5 GB option!
Next time I'll compare the phone plans on T-Mobile and determine the real value behind them, too!