Wal-Mart To Launch Unlimited Wireless Family Plan 278
adeelarshad82 writes "Wal-Mart has announced that it will sell a post-paid wireless service powered by T-Mobile, which will be targeted at families. Users who sign up for Wal-Mart Family Mobile service will not have to sign a contract. The first line will cost $45 per month, and each additional line will cost $25 per month. Each line will have unlimited talk and text, so overage charges will not be an issue. For data access, each phone will come pre-loaded with a 100MB card known as a WebPak, which is shared among all lines on an account. Data does not expire, and refill cards can be purchased in Wal-Mart stores or online. The WebPak can also be used to make international calls at 5 cents per minute to any landline number in about a dozen countries."
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:3, Informative)
Problem is that it has very limited data @ 100MB. Cue the "100MB is enough for the target market" folks.
Re:Families? (Score:5, Informative)
I dont want made you associate Family with Censorship. Family refers to purchasing in packs of more than 1. There used be a pepsi family 4-pack. Publix used to have a family pack bread. And all wireless providers offer family plans (none of which currently censor anything)
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder what the coverage is like
They are using T-Mobile's network. It'll be fine in major cities and utter crap in the countryside. Around these parts [wikipedia.org] T-Mobile is useless if you venture more than two or three miles off the interstate.....
May not be as cheap as you think (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a catch to Walmart's offerings? You bet. The available data plans are blindingly expensive, locking out much of the lucrative and quickly growing smartphone market. A single gigabyte of prepaid data through Walmart costs $40, which is quite steep compared to AT&T's 2GB for $25 per month, or T-Mobile's $30 per month for unlimited data.
So says Ars Technica [arstechnica.com], anyway. I don't know much about the market for mobile Internet, but $40 per gigabyte sounds unbelievable. I'm just passing on what I've read.
Re:Any way to bypass Bentonville? (Score:3, Informative)
Individual
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/Cell-Phone-Plans.aspx?catgroup=Individual&WT.z_unav=mst_shop_plans_individual [t-mobile.com]
Family
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/Cell-Phone-Plans.aspx?catgroup=Family [t-mobile.com]
The Even More Plus plan is the contract free version similar to the Walmart option. Looks like you get to pay ~$5/mo extra per line to avoid Walmart and deal with T-Mo directly, however.
Re:May not be as cheap as you think (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stop Sleepwalking! (Score:2, Informative)
Wal-mart employee here. I want to know more about these minimum wages. I'm not making them. I'm not management either.
I won't say how much I make but I can say I have no trouble affording a 2,300 sq. ft. house, every modern videogame console, all the videogames I want, and building a new PC every other year. Would I like to make more? Sure, everyone does. But it seems to me like I'm paid a bit better than what people assume given the comments I see.
Re:Any way to bypass Bentonville? (Score:4, Informative)
Cricket Broadband is only $40 a month, although not unlimited (high-speed changes to low-speed after 5 gigabytes).
VirginMobile offers cheap phone service for only $5 a month (25 minutes plus 20 cents each add'l minute) or $25 (300 minutes and unlimited texting).
For once Walmart is not the cheapest option.
Re:Stop Sleepwalking! (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry... Germany has hypermarkets and France doesn't? Carrefour pioneered the hypermarket concept in Europe, decades before they appeared elsewhere in other European countries.
The obesity difference between the two is more to do with one countries preference for potatoes and beer, and the other's for salad and wine.
Re:Any way to bypass Bentonville? (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent up. The Wal-Mart deal isn't actually that good, considering the offerings from Virgin Mobile, and Cricket. Not to mention Boost Mobile ($50 for unlimited everything, last I checked) and Metro PCS (similar unlimited pricing).
Personally, I keep my cell phone bill down around $10/month using prepaid minutes from T-Mobile. I've got an Android phone (G1, only $100 on eBay) and I can use sipdroid on it, combined with Google Voice and a free POTS->SIP accounts, for free minutes when I'm on wifi, which is most of the time.
Just stay the fuck away from AT&T and the other gorillas trying to lock you into overpriced 2-year plans and you'll do fine. Cell prices are finally coming down.
Re:Wireless, Line? (Score:3, Informative)
No, but you're the only idiot who seems to be equating "line" with a physical telephone wire, where everyone else knows that "line" in this case refers to a Line of Service: an active phone number that can be used to make/receive calls and texts.
So in a "family plan" type scenario the bill would be $120/mo -- one primary phone on the account and three additional phones ($45+$25+$25+$25) and all four members would be able to talk to each other or anyone else nationwide and text without overages.
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:3, Informative)
When I traveled to Hong Kong and London w/ my unlocked iPhone I picked up prepaid SIMs for around $15 that were more than enough to cover voice and data while traveling, and were substantially less expensive than what I'm locked into at home in the US.
My UK landline (£14/month) has unlimited calls to 36 countries, including the USA... without that, calls to the USA are 8p or 13p/minute (depending on time of day).
That compares well to AT&T's offering, where $23/month line rental plus $5/month (for "Worldwide Value Calling") gets you "discounted" calls to the UK for an incredible $2.29 or $3.17/minute. No wonder my American relatives email me, asking me to call.