T-Mobile has started a movement from carriers to offer early upgrade plans so subscribers could always have the latest phones. These upgrade plans let you put down a set amount of money and then pay a monthly phone payment. Then come 12 months later you can walk into your carrier store and upgrade to a new phone and repeat the process. Sprint will let you pick up a new phone for no money down, and a monthly payment for 24 months to the phone. As I said though after 12 months you can upgrade your phone, but you’ll have to agree to another 24 month contract. It’s Sprints way to offer you the newest phone all the while keeping you on your contract longer and longer each time.
Because the subsidy is gone with these monthly phone payments, Sprint will give you a $15 discount to your unlimited talk, text, and data plan. This will bring the plans cost to a low $65, but consider that phone payment plan will range from $15 all the way to $28 depending on the phone. In short, consider the phone payment plan a part of your data, talk, and text plan and the price won’t look that bad. If current customers want to upgrade to a new phone they’ll need to turn in their old phone which had to been purchase at least 12 months ago.Then they will be able to upgrade, and start the One Up program. The plan is only available at the retail stores at the moment, however it should soon roll out to online sites and other retail locations.
Now that all the major carriers offer an early upgrade plan what do you think about them? T-Mobile and Sprint offer the best upgrade plans, while AT&T and Verizon upgrade plans are a rip off. This is the small movement to customers paying full price for their phones instead of having to have subsidy for the phones. This is new idea to American’s but in other countries many carriers don’t offer subsidies and require you pay full price for phones, though phones over seas are much less in price many times.