T-Mobile is giving MetroPCS a whole new look.
MetroPCS is now Metro by T-Mobile, and it's getting some brand new rate plans to go with its new name. These new plans will be available starting in October, so if you see one that appeals to you, you'll be able to sign up soon.
Metro by T-Mobile will offer four rate plans in all, each of which offers pricing with taxes and fees included. The base plan starts at $30 per month for a single line and offers 2GB of LTE data and mobile hotspot usage from your LTE data bucket. The $40 plan bumps your LTE data allotment to 10GB per month but loses the mobile hotspot usage.
Then there are the new plans. The first starts at $50 per month for a single line and includes unlimited LTE data, 5GB of mobile hotspot usage, and 100GB of Google One cloud storage. Stepping up to the high-end $60 plan will get you unlimited LTE data, 15GB of mobile hotspot usage, and an Amazon Prime subscription to go with your Google One cloud storage.
While Metro by T-Mobile customers do use the same network as those on T-Mo, Metro customers may experience slower data speeds if they use more than 35GB of data in a single month and are in an area with network congestion. That threshold is lower than T-Mobile's, which sits at 50GB. Also of note is that video streaming on Metro by T-Mobile will be set at 480p, and there doesn't appear to be an option to get HD streaming like there is with T-Mobile and its T-Mobile One Plus add-on.
With this brand refresh, T-Mobile says that it wants to erase the notions that prepaid service is only for people with bad credit or that prepaid only offers flip phones. T-Mobile has become a popular carrier in recent years thanks to its Un-carrier moves and CEO John Legere, and now it's hoping some of that brand popularity will attract customers to Metro by T-Mobile. We'll have to wait and see if that's the case, but Metro's new plans do look like an improvement over the old MetroPCS offerings.