T-Mobile pushes HotSpot plan on disgruntled users

Over on PhoneScoop and Howard Forums T-Mobile users are fuming over their recent change to data plans available. As I and many others have found out, you can no longer get unlimited Internet access from a T-Mobile phone for $19.99 - it is now called "Total Internet", costs $29.99 and includes bundled T-Mobile WiFi HotSpot access. Of course those already on the old $19.99 plan are grandfathered in and will milk it for all its worth, but the rest of us, anxious to try out new phones and software like Google's very cool Google Local for Mobile on their existing data capable phones (most are) now have to fork over an extra $10 a month for the pleasure.

Of course if we'd never know any better $30 a month might not seem that bad - but compared to other carriers, notably Sprint and Cingular, T-Mobile's slower and much less extensive GPRS/EDGE data network doesn't match up dollar for dollar, so we expect a lower price. Upping the price and bundling a WiFi service most users probably wont ever use is just rubbing salt into the wounds and making T-Mobile less and less attractive to serious data users.

My theory is that T-Mobile is actually making a desperate attempt to bolster their HotSpot user numbers before their sell of the operation to a third party. What better way to do that than to rope in every data plan user as a HotSpot subscriber and in the mean time rake in an extra $120 a year from them? Multiply that by a few hundred thousand users (which they could easily achieve) and that might even make their HotSpot operation look like an attractive proposition to a potential buyer. The reality is most of those users don't and probably never will use a T-Mobile HotSpot and at the first opportunity to ditch the option will do so.