Kris Carlon / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The T-Mobile Go5G Next plan allows you to upgrade your phone every year.
- However, a hidden fee adds $10 per month for any free lines you have on your account.
- If you’ve been a longtime T-Mobile user, you probably have many free lines that will now not be free.
Earlier this week, T-Mobile announced a new ultra-premium plan to its roster. The Go5G Next plan is notable in that it allows you to upgrade your phone every year instead of once every two years.
At $100 each month for one line, though, it is now the most expensive T-Mobile plan and even more costly than a lot of plans from Verizon and AT&T. However, being able to upgrade your phone each year has a certain appeal for power users.
Unfortunately, T-Mobile didn’t disclose everything we need to know about the Go5G Next plan in its announcement. The folks over at The Mobile Report found that T-Mo plans to tack on a charge of $10 each month for any free lines customers have. This means long-time T-Mo subscribers with multiple free lines might be stuck with hefty monthly fees if they decide to jump on the Go5G Next bandwagon.
T-Mobile Go5G Next: Free line charges?
If you’re not aware, T-Mobile makes a habit out of doing free line promotions. Periodically, T-Mobile subscribers can grab a new, totally free line for their account. There’s a one-time activation fee, but then you get a free line forever. What’s more, you can stack these lines as the promotions happen. As such, there are folks out there with more free lines than paid ones. Myself, I have two paid lines and two free ones.
If I decided to upgrade my Magenta Max plan to the T-Mobile Go5G Next plan, my monthly bill would go up by $30 just for the upgrade and then an extra $20 for those two free lines for a total of a $50 monthly increase. On top of that, to best take advantage of Next’s best perk — upgrading a phone each year — I would need to buy a phone on installment, which could be around $45 each month for a $1,000 phone.
Long story short, upgrading to Next would cause my monthly bill to explode.
Fortunately, there is a possibility that T-Mobile could rescind this charge for free lines before the August 24 rollout date of Go5G Next. The Mobile Report found this information in leaked internal documents, so it’s possible the company won’t actually institute it. It’s also possible T-Mobile could waive the fee for certain customers or offer a promotional period in which the fee would be disregarded.
We’ll know more on August 24. For now, though, we’d advise anyone with free T-Mobile lines to wait and see before signing on the dotted line.
