Will sprint add a "LTE charge" when LTE capable phones are released?

[pyroscott]

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 15 January 2012

 

 

When the Evo was released, sprint added the infamous $10 charge. Afterwards, they called it the smartphone charge. Is it imminent that there will be another charge when sprint rolls out LTE? Possibly the end of unlimited data? A whole new set of plans that we will have to switch to?

Hopefully they learned from the backlash from their smartphone "tax" and leave it as is. Verizon was nice enough to double up the data allowance to entice customers who weren't grandfathered in with unlimited data to buy a LTE phone.

[S4GRU]

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 15 January 2012

 

Supposedly Sprint is going to leave plans as they are. However, a Sprint VP last week at CES that Sprint is currently reviewing its plans for LTE to see if they need any modification. I hope they keep them as-is.

[legion125]

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 15 January 2012

 

Sprint can't take the hit for any additional fees. If it does, it will certainly be on parity with the Big Two, and even unlimited data won't be enough to keep many from defecting. As a distant third carrier, Sprint needs to do something more to show it's different from the others, especially since T-Mo is still around and has Sprint beat as a value carrier. Perhaps Sprint has something up its sleeve for the future, but so far, nothing.

[autoprime]

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 15 January 2012

 

i believe plans will remain the same... at least for the near future. 2013... who knows..

[jpkjeff]

Migrated from Original Forum. Originally Posted 16 January 2012

 

So far, Sprint has maintained prices at or slightly below the competition when it comes to their plans. The one wild card in all this is unlimited: will their 4G LTE plans also feature unlimited data for smartphones? If so, then I could see some sort of fee/add on for LTE plans at some point, with the argument being that while the competition has no such add on fee, Sprint's plans are unlimited, so ultimately you save money.

 

I'm not an expert on network management, but I would think they would WANT people to use their new, 4G LTE network more in order to offload traffic from the 3G network which as we all know is quite congested at times now (especially with the addition of the iPhone). So I hope they will refrain from adding any additional fees or costs to 4G plans when they come out, at least initially.