T-Mobile launches half-off smartphone promotion, adds data to refreshed prepaid plans

T-Mobile (NYSE:TMUS) launched a promotion offering customers half off a second smartphone when they buy one at full price. The deal is available to new and existing T-Mobile Simple Choice customers and applies to a variety of handsets including four Samsung Galaxy devices.

No phone trade-in is required, and families and businesses can get up to six smartphones at half price. Customers must buy the phones with an equipment installment plan or at full retail price.

The nation's third-largest carrier also updated its Simply Prepaid plans, as TmoNews reported, replacing them with a series of offerings ranging from $25 a month to $60 a month. The new plans include increased amounts of data over previous plans.

T-Mobile's cheapest new plan comes with unlimited text and talk but no data and is targeted primarily at users who depend primarily on Wi-Fi; a $30 monthly plan offers 100 minutes of talk and 5 GB of high-speed data with unlimited texts.

Data plans at $40, $50 and $60 per month have also been refreshed. The $40 plan includes unlimited text and talk as well as 3 GB of high-speed data; the high-end plan ups the ante with 10 GB of high-speed data.

Like its rival Sprint, T-Mobile continues to aggressively pursue competitors' customers in a U.S. mobile market that is increasingly competitive. Last week T-Mobile launched a prepaid campaign through its MetroPCS business that offers to cut 22 percent to 50 percent off the service pricing of Sprint's Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile customers, and it executed multiple promotions during the cutthroat holiday season.

T-Mobile last week ended a promotion that offered four lines with six GB each for $120 a month, upping the price to $140 per month.

For more:
- see this T-Mobile press release

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