T-Mobile US will automatically move several thousand customers off grandfathered plans and onto current plans starting July 13. Allan Samson said absolutely nothing is required of the customer, and it just is going to happen.
The carrier says affected subscribers will learn about the change by text or through the T-Life app, and some will see bills rise by up to $6 per line. The move reaches long-running plans that some customers have kept for 10 to 15 years, including retired plan families that date back well before the current lineup.
Allan Samson and T-Life
Samson, T-Mobile's chief marketing officer, said legacy plans will be moved to comparable modern plans in the current lineup. He said the lineup includes Essentials, Essentials Saver, Experience More, Experience Beyond and Better Value.
He also said the company is not moving customers all the way to rack-rate pricing. In his words, “the price they're going to be paying in a huge majority of cases is still going to be below what that exact plan sells for today” and “We’re not moving you all the way up to the rack rate.”
Simple Choice and Magenta
The retired plans could include Simple Choice, T-Mobile One, One Plus and the Magenta family of plans. Grandfathered Sprint plans that carried over when T-Mobile and Sprint merged in 2020 could also be affected, giving the change a reach beyond one plan family.
One named example shows how the migration works: A One Plan TE plan will become Experience More with Appreciation Savings. The migrated plan includes unlimited high-speed 5G and 4G LTE data, 60GB of mobile hotspot data, Netflix Standard with ads and video streaming at up to 4K UHD.
Price changes on T-Mobile
Apple TV Plus will instead cost $3 a month on the migrated plan, and the T-Mobile Kickback program is being retired along with the plans. Lines that are currently free from old promotions will remain free, which means the automatic move does not erase every existing benefit at once.
The practical question for customers is whether their own line lands in the group that keeps a similar monthly cost or the group that rises by up to $6 per line. With notices going out through text or T-Life and the changes beginning July 13, affected customers do not have to take action to stay on the move, but they do need to check the notice against the plan they have now.
