Sprint 3G Smartphone Data Plans Go Up $10, Same as 4G

Bad news for all of you Sprint-subscribing, bandwidth-hogging data gluttons out there: The company will soon implement a new $10 monthly data-plan fee for smartphones activated after Jan. 30. And it applies to all Sprint smartphones, including those capable only of using Sprint’s 3G network.

Sprint announced the upcoming change in a press release Tuesday. But in a leaked memo sent to third-party retailers, the company more narrowly defined the types of phones and customers affected by the new fee. It includes “all smartphones operating on the CDMA, iDEN and 4G networks,” where a smartphone is defined as “a device that supports a robust operating system including: Android, BlackBerry, Instinct, Palm and Windows Mobile.”

The $10 premium-data charge currently applies to all HTC EVO 4G, EVO Shift 4G and Samsung Epic 4G smartphones in the Sprint network, so now 3G smartphone users will feel the same financial burn as 4G users, but without being able to access the 4G networks’ faster speeds.

For those of you that already have 3G phones on the Sprint network, fret not (or at least not yet), as you won’t be dinged with the new charge unless you either upgrade your existing smartphone or activate a new smartphone on your existing account. If and when you do decide to upgrade or change your plan, however, even those of you that aren’t packing the latest 4G phones will still have to pony up another $10 bucks a month.

Sprint claims a “wireless data explosion” in smartphone user growth and network popularity have necessitated the company’s fee expansion. Complaints about fees first circulated in June, when Sprint debuted the HTC EVO 4G with a mandatory $10 data fee for 4G. The company’s initial statements made the fee seem a necessary counterpart to 4G access.

Before griping, we should remember that giving Sprint that extra 10 bucks a month gets you unlimited 4G data with no tiered pricing structures for different monthly caps. (Sprint does cap its 3G data plan at 5 GB monthly, however.) That means there are no overage fees for exceeding your monthly data-plan limits, either. AT&T currently offers a tiered system, with a $15 fee for a 200-MB monthly limit, or a $25 fee for a 2-GB monthly cap. AT&T ceased offering an unlimited data plan in June 2010.

Verizon may follow AT&T, but for the time being maintains a $30 monthly unlimited-data-plan option. We may see that change, however, with the company’s recent iPhone 4G deal. Verizon also offers a $15 monthly plan for 150 MB of data.

So, after looking at other pricing models, the $10 monthly option from Sprint doesn’t look half bad. But with Gartner’s report that smartphone sales in the fall of 2010 were up 96 percent over the same period in 2009, we’ll wait and see if Sprint’s pricing model is sustainable.

Photo: Samsung Epic 4G/Samsung

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