T-Mobile to offer Unlimited everything plans on and off contract

Looks like T-Mobile has decided to get in a little closer with the competition. They have now unleashed their new Unlimited Everything plans, sadly they aren’t truly unlimited but more on that below. They are offering two unlimited packages, one being on contract, and the other is contract free.


The Even More plan is $79.99 per month and requires a two-year contract, then the Even More Plus plan is $59.99 per month with no annual contract required and is geared towards the month-to-month prepaid customers. Both of these are for a limited time only so we suggest you hurry in and get a shiny new Sidekick 4G, or wait a few days and get the LG G2x.

Sadly we have heard some news that makes these exciting plans not all that exciting after all. Yes everything is unlimited but if you go over 2GB on your data T-Mobile will start to slow down and throttle your speeds, basically to a crawl. T-Mobile has said that all you facebookers and mobile data consumers use on average about 1GB a month of data, well they said that the “average” customer uses this amount. I know that I use anywhere from 3GB-5GB a month right now, but I’m more of a power user when it comes to Android. So those plans are a no go for some of those more power users, or those that use lots of data. I am glad to see they are lowering prices, and not increasing them now that data is being used more and more, but unlimited data that is actually capped, and slowdowns are a few things I’m not to happy to see. What are your thoughts? Full press release below:

T-Mobile USA, Inc. today announced that new, single-line unlimited plans are available starting tomorrow for just $79.99 per month, with an Even More™ plan and a two-year contract, or $59.99 per month, with an Even More Plus™plan with no annual contract required. Available for a limited time, the new plans offer great value for new and existing customers with unlimited nationwide calling, texting and data on America’s Largest 4G Network™.

“Consumers today are looking for even more value and flexibility from their wireless plans,” said John Clelland, senior vice president, marketing, T-Mobile USA. “While data plans for many of our competitors continue to be very expensive, T-Mobile is lowering the price of our unlimited plans and offering more options, making it easier than ever for customers to step up to a richer mobile data experience on our 4G network.”

Combined with an extensive lineup of affordable smartphones, T-Mobile’s new Even More unlimited plan allows customers to save more than $350 per year on an unlimited smartphone plan, compared to similar plans from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint1. Customers have the flexibility to purchase any phone in T-Mobile’s lineup and sign up for an unlimited rate plan – with or without a contract term commitment.

In contrast to some competing offerings, T-Mobile’s new Even More unlimited and Even More Plus unlimited plans enable customers to use mobile data on their smartphones without incurring any overage charges. Consumers exceeding 2GB of usage in a billing month will still have access to unlimited data at reduced speeds until their new billing cycle starts. On average, T-Mobile 4G smartphone customers consume about 1 GB of data per billing month.

In addition to its unlimited plans, T-Mobile continues to offer one of the industry’s most affordable entry-level data plans, starting at just $10 for 200 MB per billing month. The company also strives to help customers on these data plans avoid surprise bills with SMS alerts when they are reaching their data limit.

The new $79.99 Even More unlimited and $59.99 Even More Plus unlimited plans are available starting tomorrow for qualifying customers. To find the T-Mobile plan that best fits their needs, customers can visit http://www.t-mobile.com.

T-Mobile’s HSPA+ 4G network not available everywhere. See coverage details at T-Mobile.com.

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How Rummble Turned Competitors to Customers

This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what they’re doing to grow.

Rummble was in the location-based review space before anyone had heard of Foursquare. In 2008, the website was already helping people figure out where to go based on where they were and what their former preferences said about them. But while you’ve probably heard of Foursquare and Gowalla (and even that puts you in the extreme minority), you probably haven’t heard of Rummble.


Even though 200,000 users have signed up for the service, few of them have used it on a daily basis even at the company’s peak. Rummble’s prospects were looking dim as large players like Google and Facebook entered the location-based services space.

A bit of an identity crisis ensued. The startup added a Foursquare-like badge system, launched a Twitter app, created a white-label product for a WiFi directory, and at one point even started a video show.

During South by Southwest this year, the UK-based startup announced a completely new focus that departs from all of its previous dabblings. While its main recommendation product will stay in operation, the company plans to focus on a B2B service powered by the same recommendation technology.


Mashable recently chatted with Rummble COO Alex Housley and Commercial Director Louisa East about how their company will make the transition from competing with location-based services to competing for their business.

Navigating a Growing Location-Based Service Space

In many ways, Housley says Rummble started in the place where location-based startups like Foursquare have now ended up. It focused on personalized recommendations from the start, basing them on how users and contacts in their social networks interact with the app.
 
“We worked at the technical stuff first — the deeply technical stuff first — with the personalization and recommendations rather than focusing more on the mechanics that have been quite successful with some of the other location based services, the user interface,” Housley says.

Foursquare and Gowalla launched in 2009. Facebook and Google both joined the game In 2010.

“It’s become such a crowded space and there are a lot of people doing the same thing, there’s some big names out there that are practically household brands,” East says. “So at the beginning of this year we put together our heads and thought that we know that the technology we had was really really solid and just figure out how we can use that technology in other areas.”

If You Can’t Beat Them…

At South by Southwest this year, Housley was greeted at the Austin airport by a large banner ad for Google Places — further evidence, he thought, that the announcement he was to make at the conference was on the right track.

Housley later revealed that Rummble would be focusing on a B2B service that would lend its recommendation technology to other players through an API.

At a time when people are asking how location-based services will make money, Rummble wants to be part of the answer. The company also wants to provide the service for ecommerce and media sites.

“We were doing it already for location — the personalization and recommendation — and we thought it would be more potential to not have that engine locked into Rummble, into our consumer side,” Housley says.

He declined to comment on whether founder and former CEO Andrew Scott shared this vision, but he did acknowledge that Scott has left the company and has yet to be replaced.

Looking Forward

In the last several months, Rummble has been working with a handful of partners to create demo applications of Rummble’s API on their websites.

A wine site, for instance, has integrated Rummble’s API to create a personalized recommendation list for each of its customers even before they make a single purchase. To do this, the API gathers information about what each customer is searching for, what they’ve viewed, and what they place in their shopping baskets. It attaches a different level of significance to each action when factoring it into recommendations. Rumble also helps match site users with others who share their interests.

Rummble’s plan is to target location-based services that lack recommendation services, ecommerce sites, travel sites, private sales clubs, and publications with its new B2B service. It will charge these companies a small rate per transaction in exchange for using the technology.

“If you’re looking at building a consumer app from scratch, it makes sense to get some of the mechanics right first,” Housley says.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark 

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

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Group Buying Industry In U.S. Estimated To Grow 138 Percent To $2.7 Billion This Year

The group buying industry has sprung out of nowhere over the past two years. A new report (embedded below) by daily deal aggregator Local Offer Network puts the U.S. gross revenues across the industry at $1.1 billion last year, and estimates gross revenues will grow 138 percent to $2.7 billion in 2011.

Groupon alone, according to other sources, is expected to bring in between $3 billion and $4 billion this year, up from $760 million last year, but those numbers are worldwide. If you figure at least half of Groupon’s revenues come from the U.S., you can get a sense of how much it dominates the market—capturing anywhere from about 50 to 75 percent of expected industry revenues this year.

But that still leaves as much as half left over for other group buying sites, such as LivingSocial and Gilt Groupe. And those are just the big dogs. Local Offer Network tracked 90,000 deals across 322 group-buying sites in the U.S. since January, 2010. And that doesn’t even include so-called private sale sites.

In the first quarter of 2011, it tracked 117 new deal sites, which is about double the number of entrants a year ago. The churn rate for these sites is about 25 percent, meaning that is how many fail, are bought, or go dormant.

The number of deals being offered is also accelerating. Last year, there were about 63,000 deals in the U.S. through group buying sites. In the first quarter of 2011, there will be an estimated 40,000. Groupon accounts for less than half of those published deals.

The categories that dominate are Food and Drink (27%), Beauty, Spa & Massage (19%), Fitness & nutrition (7%), Sports & Recreation (7%), and Home Products & Services (5%). The biggest cities for daily deals are Chicago (where Groupon is based), New York City, San Francisco, Boston, and LA.

Local Offer Network gets all of this data in a variety of ways, including business relationships with about half of the group buying sites, data feeds, APIs and web crawlers.

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All the Web’s TV & Movies in One Sweet Spot: Moki.tv

If you’re a digitally aware couch potato like me, you risk burning a significant number of calories surfing between Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and iTunes to get your fix of movies and television shows.

If you’re interested in mitigating that risk, you’ll want to take a look at Moki.tv, an all-in-one guide to the Internet’s entertainment offerings.

From Moki, you can browse a broad and deep catalog of almost all the silver-screen and small-screen content available on the web. You can watch free content from Hulu; subscription stuff from Hulu Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Comcast’s xfinity tv; and on-demand TV and movies from iTunes and Amazon Video On Demand. You can sign up with Facebook Connect, then simply select the content services you already use; Moki makes it easy to connect service with third-party authentication, so you won’t need to remember any logins.

Once you’re in, you’ll be able to rate movies and get recommendations — you can even pull your rating from Netflix to Moki and vice versa — and create a queue of shows and movies to watch. The site uses your ratings as well as ratings from IMDb, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes to make recommendations for you; and the recommendations I got were spot-on, especially after I had imported my Netflix ratings.

Not only can you find and watch what you love without visiting a half-dozen websites; you can also find new shows and films to watch that are similar to ones you’ve already watched. You can sort content by genre, rating, popularity and release date; or you can browse award-winning films and TV shows. The site also has fascinating curated collections of content, like Shakespeare adaptations or Clint Eastwood flicks hand-picked by Eastwood himself.

In addition to getting boatloads of online video, you can explore trending lists of actors and directors, read synopses, write reviews, leave comments, and more. And perhaps best of all, if you signed up with Facebook Connect, you have an instant social connection and can see your friends’ ratings and reviews on content, too.

The site, though new, is remarkably full-featured; many of these cool features are made possible by clever integrations with existing sites and apps.

You can expect to see streaming media sources on Moki.tv soon. Currently, the site’s founders are polling users to find out which streaming sources are the most requested. Moki’s also working on an API.

We like the premise of the site — one-stop shopping for watching TV and movies online — and we like the UI, which is sleekly designed with lots of nice touches. Check it out for yourself, and let us know what you think.

Moki, Inc. is an San Francisco-based Y Combinator startup founded by Matt Huang, a recent MIT math grad, and Sandy Spicer, a fellow dev from MIT. The company is currently hiring looking for local engineering talent.

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