T-Mobile’s GoSmart Hopes to Boost Data Use by Offering Unlimited Free Mobile Access to Facebook (original) (raw)

Overseas, Facebook has worked with a number of carriers to bring free access to the social network for those who don’t otherwise have data plans for their phones.

Now a T-Mobile subsidiary is trying to see if the same thing works in the U.S. GoSmart, a prepaid brand owned by T-Mobile, will offer unlimited free access to Facebook and Facebook Messenger to its phone customers, whether or not they have a data plan.

“Facebook is the most important online communication tool we’ve seen come around,” said Gavin Dillon, T-Mobile’s VP of partner brands.

The free service, which begins next month, will extend to anything hosted on Facebook itself — such as an embedded video — but if a link takes a user off Facebook’s site, they will need to have a data plan, Dillon said.

It’s similar to a program that Facebook has done overseas to bring its social network to mobile users, but marks the first time that it has been tried in the States.

For GoSmart, it is a chance for T-Mobile to give a unique selling point to the GoSmart brand launched earlier this year. The carrier offers plans starting at 25amonthforunlimitedtalk.Unlimitedtextingcostsanadditional25 a month for unlimited talk. Unlimited texting costs an additional 25amonthforunlimitedtalk.Unlimitedtextingcostsanadditional5 a month, while talk, text and low-speed Web access costs 35amonth,andupgradingtounlimited3Gdatawillcostanextra35 a month, and upgrading to unlimited 3G data will cost an extra 35amonth,andupgradingtounlimited3Gdatawillcostanextra10 on top of that.

So far, Dillon said, GoSmart has signed up “hundreds of thousands” of customers. T-Mobile also sells prepaid service under its own name and through its recently acquired MetroPCS brand, as well as through various partners.