T-Mobile has avoided raising rates on older plans for the past few years, but now that’s about to change. In a memo to employees obtained by CNET, the company said it will begin sending notices Wednesday to some customers whose charges will increase starting with their June or July bills.
The memo was sent by John Fryer, president of T-Mobile’s consumer group. The memo doesn’t list which plans are affected, but Freier specifically says that those on the carrier’s latest assortment of Go5G plans won’t see a price increase. The same goes for the “millions of customers” who are covered by T-Mobile’s Price Lock guarantee, which it says will continue to be in effect for those people.
Fryer said in the memo that T-Mobile is raising prices on older plans “for the first time in nearly a decade” and that the increases are designed to “keep pace with rising inflation and costs.”
It is not known exactly how many people will be affected by the change. The memo says it will affect a “small portion” of T-Mobile customers.
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The company expects to notify all affected customers on Wednesday. T-Mobile previously tried to switch customers on older, generally cheaper plans to some of its newer, more expensive plans last year, only to drop the plan amid backlash. While the move gave people the option to call T-Mobile support and oppose the change, a source familiar with the company’s plans tells CNET that option won’t be available with this new rate hike.
People affected by the price increase will be able to call to change their plans to newer T-Mobile offerings, but they won’t be able to opt out of the increase. Plans that were included in last year’s experimental migration included T-Mobile’s older One, Simple Choice, Magenta and Magenta 55 Plus options.
The price hike announcement comes amid increasing talk from the company that it wants to raise prices. Just last week, at the MoffettNathanson media and communications conference, T-Mobile CFO Peter Oswaldik hinted that an increase was on the way. He did not reveal any details at the time.
Price hike after Sprint merger
As part of its merger with Sprint, which closed in 2020, T-Mobile was legally required not to raise prices for three years. That period ended last year and the operator has since introduced its assortment of Go5G plans: Go5G, Go5G Plus and Go5G Next. These plans have some new features, but are also more expensive than T-Mobile’s earlier offerings. The carrier still allows new customers to sign up for older or cheaper plans like Magenta, Magenta Max and Essentials, but some of those plans (namely Magentas) are hidden on its website and you’ll have to call or talk to T-Mobile Support if they want to register.
Even just to find the Magenta and Magenta Max options today, you have to go to T-Mobile’s plans page, click “see more available plans,” then click a link to “learn more about Magenta plans and Magenta Max’.
In a recent report, Finland-based research firm Rewheel, as spotted by Light Reading, found that since the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, the US wireless market has become “one of the most expensive mobile markets in the world.”
While the move is the first price increase from T-Mobile, its competitors have already made multiple increases to their respective plans over the past few years. AT&T raised rates on its newest plans by 99 cents earlier this year and went through other rate hikes for older plans.
Verizon similarly went through a series of price hikes for its plans, most recently for those who were still on their older 5G Get More, Do More, Play More plans in February after raising rates for some of its older unlimited plans last summer while adding new fees for other, older plans last year.
As with other price hikes — including T-Mobile’s ostensibly — Verizon’s latest move seems designed to get people to switch to some of its newer, more expensive wireless plans.
