T-Mobile Offers to Roll Over Data -- Update

By Thomas Gryta 

Taking a page from AT&T's history book, T-Mobile will let subscribers roll over their unused wireless data each month, its latest move in the industry's escalating price war.

The move takes aim at efforts by market leaders AT&T and Verizon to charge their subscribers more as their data use goes up. Both carriers have moved their customers away from unlimited data plans to ones that get more costly as data allotments increase, a key to their plans for squeezing more growth out of a market where most people already have smartphones.

The feature, called "Data Stash," harks back to an earlier era when cellphone users had to carefully keep track of their voice minutes. At the time, one of AT&T's predecessor companies, Cingular Wireless, capitalized by letting subscribers roll over their voice minutes.

AT&T might already be working on a similar offer. According to records from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the carrier filed on Nov. 25 to trademark "Mobile Share Rollover," "Rollover Data" and "Family Rollover."

An AT&T spokesman confirmed the filings but wouldn't discuss the details.

T-Mobile's plan lets subscribers roll over their unused data for up to a year beginning next month. The plan applies to postpaid customers on the company's Simple Choice plans who have a smartphone plan with 3 gigabytes or more of high-speed data, or a tablet plan with 1 gigabyte or more.

T-Mobile is starting people with 10 gigabytes per line in their reserve, and data begins rolling over when that initial allotment is used.

Smartphone users need data plans to stream videos or music, share photos and send email. The new offering could help T-Mobile retain customers if subscribers are less likely to walk away from a pile of data that they have built up for months.

T-Mobile's announcement Tuesday comes a week after AT&T and Verizon warned that the cost of keeping up with rivals' promotions is hitting their bottom lines. Competition from T-Mobile and more recently Sprint is making them work harder to keep their wireless subscriber counts growing.

In October, T-Mobile raised its projection for postpaid net additions for 2014 to a range of 4.3 million to 4.7 million, up from a previous estimate of 3 million to 3.5 million. The carrier has added more than 5.6 million customers since the beginning of 2013, in a saturated industry with little real subscriber growth.

AT&T, Verizon and Sprint offered subscribers extra data on many plans earlier this year as a way to make them more attractive for subscribers without cutting prices further.

In many cases, the plans offered far more data than typical subscribers use, making it harder to profit from future growth.

"The rollover offering can further hurt the ability for carriers to get paid for the growth in data consumption," Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins said.

Write to Thomas Gryta at [e-mail]

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