Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show descends on Las Vegas, and sets the tone for the year in tech with announcements, product launches, and more. This year's CES has proved particularly interesting in the mobile industry, and consumers who were paying attention to the events of CES may be able to use their knowledge to drive savings on their phone bills and a better overall mobile experience.
The most active mobile provider at CES 2014 has no doubt been T-Mobile. In the wake of the company's failed merger with AT&T in 2011, T-Mobile's time at CES has started to take on the look of soap opera—complete with cheif executive John Legere getting tossed out of a pre-show AT&T trade party. It's no secret that T-Mobile is trying to seperate itself from the mainstream mobile carriers, and it's clear from Legere's antics at CES that the company has singled out their would-be partners AT&T for the majority of their ire. But what has T-Mobile announced at CES that can really help mobile users?
For one thing, Legere expanded upon T-Mobile's decision to do away with long-term contracts by announcing at CES that the company would also be offering to pay the early termination fees of users who want to break their contract with another carrier to move to T-Mobile.
According to Jason Hope technolgy entrepreneur, T-Mobile's new role as a rebellious industry outsider can only mean good things for consumers.
"When T-Mobile decided they wanted to shake things up in the mobile industry, doing things like getting rid of contracts and offering to pay early termination fees, it was a great day for consumers," said Hope. We're talking about an industry that has been incredibly monopolistic and set in its ways for a long time now, but once T-Mobile made the first move, other carriers had to follow suit or risk getting left behind."
In addition to its early termination fee announcement, T-Mobile also used CES to give consumers an update on its LTE network, saying that it now it can now offer coverage to 209 million Americans. This announcement should be of interest to consumers who had considered T-Mobile, but were concerned about the coverage its data network provides.
Hope's prediction about other mobile carriers reacting to T-Mobile's example was proved true at CES, when AT&T announced their new sponsored data plan, which will allow content providers to pay for mobile data used by customers. As a result, consumers would be able to use a sponsored service on an AT&T data plan without having the activity count against their monthly data usage.
This announcement came in the wake of AT&T's pledge to pay T-Mobile customers to move to AT&T, a clear indication that T-Mobile's bold actions are already resulting in greater choice for consumers.
Sprint also joined in on the CES activity, announcing a new take on group mobile plans called Framily plans. The idea of "framily" aims to capitalize on the increase in smaller households in the United States by offering consumers the ability to decide for themselves who they consider family, and hence, who they would want included on their group mobile plan.
As Sprint users add members to their framily, the total monthly cost per line decreases. A single Sprint user would pay $55 a month for unlimited talk and text and 1 GB of data, with the monthly cost per line decreasing $5 for each additional user added to the framily. Users can have up to 10 members in a framily, but the monthly cost per user would not decrease any lower than $25, meaning that users wouldn't recieve any extra cost benefits for adding more than seven users.
"I think that what Sprint is doing is an interesting new take on the idea of group mobile plans, and it shows that they're paying attention to what's happening demographically in America right now," said Hope. "A lot of users don't have very large families that they talk to frequently, and with these new plans, they can pick who they call often, and everyone has the potential to save."
About the Author:
Amy Taylor is a technology and business writer. Amy began her career as a small business owner in Phoenix, Arizona. She has taken that knowledge and experience and brought that to her unique writing capabilities. She really enjoys new business related issues that are tied directly to technology.
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