T-Mobile 'forgot' to mention an upsetting detail about its ultra-affordable Connect plan
The T-Mobile Connect plan is only one of the many ways in which the "Un-carrier" aims to help its customers get through the coronavirus pandemic with their mental health intact and their bank accounts minimally affected.
While this move was not entirely dictated by people's increased needs for reliable and affordable wireless services during a time when "social distancing" is essential, Magenta's initial intention was to roll out the $15 a month prepaid plan after merging with Sprint. That hasn't happened yet, so folks on super-tight budgets wanting to stay in touch with friends and family must be pleased to see the option released a little early.
But even though T-Mo went into pretty great detail when announcing this coronavirus-prompted early rollout a few days ago as to what the plan does and does not include, one small thing appears to have gone unmentioned. As noticed by a number of eagle-eyed Redditors, the fine print on T-Mobile's official website dedicated to its prepaid services portfolio clearly specifies your data becomes "unavailable for balance of service period" once you reach your monthly allotment.
In other words, your data is capped at 2GB on the $15 a month Connect plan or 5 gigs if you don't mind coughing up an extra 10 bucks, which differs from the way things are usually done at T-Mobile nowadays. Other plans throttle data rather than cap it altogether, so instead of being cut off from the internet, customers that exceed their high-speed data buckets simply need to settle for (substantially) reduced download numbers.
Of course, T-Mobile Connect subscribers will be able to, well, stay connected after their 2 or 5GB data allotment is up if they want, but only if they don't have a problem purchasing daily or weekly high-speed data passes. That can be a little inconvenient, not to mention how it kind of defeats the purpose of having such a dirt-cheap smartphone plan to begin with.
Last but not least, data caps go against the very "Un-carrier" mantra, which could actually be part of the reason why the company was only planning to make this thing available after morphing into its "New T-Mobile" identity. Then again, the target audience of the ultra-affordable Connect option might rarely spill the 2GB data bucket anyway, so maybe very few people will end up feeling genuinely upset because of this somewhat questionable practice.
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