T-Mobile and Wal-Mart team up for new 4G prepaid mobile plan

With more and more customers looking to get away from actually talking on the cell phone, companies are seeing an option to sell plans that cater more to customers that text a lot or heavy data users.  Today, T-Mobile and Wal-mart announced a partnership to bring a new no contract mobile plan to customers and it looks like it could be the cheapest unlimited data and texting plan on the market.  The new plan, which is $30, will give the customer unlimited data and text, as well as, 100 minutes of talk time.  Once the talk time is used up, the customer will be charged 10 cents per minute the rest of the month.

T-Mobile and Wal-mart know that customers mostly use their smartphones for email or social networking and communicating through text messages.  The regular talk time minutes are less important, especially in the younger demographic group.  More children and young adults will text as a form of communication instead of dialing a number and blowing through 300+ minutes a month without any problem.  Now, the texting customers can text all month and even use the web at their convenience for one affordable price.

Wal-mart already has a pretty decent lineup for pre-paid wireless services, as well as, setting up plans with AT&T and Verizon.  In the last year, T-Mobile has terminated its partnership with RadioShack, so partnering up with Wal-mart is a good way to get their product line back into a major retail outlet.    The offer is really nice for those that cannot afford a typical smartphone data plan, but there is a catch.  The plan offers a 5GB data cap and once that is used up, the speeds are “throttled” down significantly.  This might not be a big deal if you are looking for a plan you can afford.  A plan like this one that offers 5GB of data is pretty nice and even if you hit that and get throttled down to dial up, it’s still well worth the $30 and no contract.

T-Mobile is working as much magic as they can to retain customers the company has lost of the last year.  With no contract phones becoming more popular and more affordable, companies are trying anything they can to get customers back.  Offering up a pre-paid phone plan through one of the nation’s largest retailers is a pretty good start.