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Is Sprint (S) Upgrading its Unlimited Data Plan?

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U.S. national wireless carrier Sprint Corp. (S - Free Report) has once again fortified its foothold in the wireless industry by upgrading its unlimited data plans. The country's wireless industry is already heated up with various unlimited plans being launched by its top four carriers.

As part of the promotion, new customers can buy a single line on Sprint’s unlimited plan for $50 a month, and from two to five lines for $90 a month. Any extra line will cost $40 each. These rates will remain effective till Mar 31, 2018. After that, Sprint will raise the prices back to the normal rates, per which one line costs $60 a month, two lines cost $100 a month, and every line beyond that costs an additional $30 a month.

The unlimited data plan will also offer high-definition (HD) video streaming and 10 GB of LTE mobile-hotspot data a month for new subscribers. However, to enjoy HD video streaming on an unlimited plan, subscribers may have to pay for a separate $75-a-month. 

Moreover, new subscribers can stream video up to a sharper 1080p resolution on the default plan. Sprint also plans to update its older gaming and music streams from 2 Mbps to 8 Mbps, and from 500 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps, respectively. With this, Sprint confirmed that the updates are meant only for new subscribers and for those who will purchase five lines of service for $90 a month as part of a price promotion that the carrier rolled out earlier this month.

Well, the best part is that the carrier allows mobile-hotspot usage up to 5 GB of LTE data per month on the default unlimited plan, and 3 GB of LTE data a month on the $75 plan. AT&T Inc.’s (T - Free Report) unlimited plan doesn't include hotspot data.However, anyone exceeding 23 GB of LTE data in a given month will get slowed down to 2G speed for the rest of the pay period.

Unlimited Data Plan War

On comparing, we see that the unlimited data plan offered by Sprint is cheaper when compared to the unlimited plans of U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile US (TMUS - Free Report) and Verizon communications Inc. (VZ - Free Report) .

T-Mobile US’ unlimited plan starts at $70 per month for a single line, and two lines are available for $100 a month. Verizon offers a single line of unlimited data for $80 a month with a second line for $60 a month. AT&T's unlimited plan starts at $100 a month, but it notably doesn’t include monthly taxes and fees, which raises the final cost. Verizon and AT&T do not include those fees in their advertised rates, either, but T-Mobile does.

We look forward to seeing which among these four carriers’ unlimited offerings gain popularity among customers and hence, which carriers succeeds to lure in the maximum number of subscribers in the wireless industry. Notably, over the past three months, Sprint returned 21.09%, while the Zacks-categorized Wireless National industry gained 7.23%.

Sprint currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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