Scoop: Sprint tests out family data plan, other discounted offers
The wireless carrier is testing a cheaper version of plans offered by AT&T and Verizon Wireless, underscoring the notion that it's moving away from being simply the “unlimited data” carrier. — Sprint CEO Dan Hesse at a company event in June.
Context & Ripple Effects
Sprint spent years defining itself as the last big carrier selling unlimited data, but the ground has been shifting all year under CEO Dan Hesse: the company launched group-priced 'Framily' plans in January 2014 and expanded into prepaid options with smartphones sold without data plans in March, both moves that trade the unlimited-data banner for price-based segmentation.
The test reported here is aimed directly at rivals' pricing sheets — a discounted version of the family share plans AT&T and Verizon Wireless sell, following AT&T's February launch of a $130 two-line 10GB shared plan with $15 add-a-lines. That the scoop traveled fast enough to draw public reaction from T-Mobile chief John Legere underscores how sensitive the big three are to any discounting move in the family-plan segment.
First-order effects
- Sprint's own positioning is the immediate casualty: testing cheaper copies of AT&T's and Verizon's tiered family plans puts Hesse's carrier in the awkward spot of undercutting the very unlimited-data identity that differentiated it, forcing a choice between two brand stories.
- Price-sensitive multi-line households gain a third discounted family option alongside AT&T's shared plans, tightening the comparison-shopping loop for switching decisions.
Second-order effects
- AT&T and Verizon face pressure to defend their $130-plus shared-data price points with promotions or add-on discounts, since Sprint's test explicitly targets a cheaper version of their flagship family offers.
- T-Mobile — whose Legere was among the first to amplify this story publicly — gets fresh ammunition for its own aggressive family pricing, keeping the discount-carrier flank of the market in constant repricing motion.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, unlimited data stops functioning as a carrier differentiator altogether and US wireless consolidates around shared-bucket family plans as the default product architecture, with competition migrating to per-line discounts and device subsidies.
- The convergence raises the odds of a sustained price war across all four national carriers, where the discounters' cost structures determine how low headline family prices can fall.
The trend: US carriers are abandoning unlimited data as a differentiator and converging on discounted shared family plans, with Sprint's test marking another step in an escalating cross-carrier price war.