Sprint (NYSE:S) MVNO Ting is cutting its data pricing, making it less expensive especially for customers who use a lot of data on its service. The price cuts come two years after Ting's initial launch.
Ting, which is owned by Tucows, said the price cuts are not a promotion and are simply its new pricing. For customers who want 101 to 500 MB per month the cost will be cut from $13 to $12 per month. For 501 to 1,000 MB, the price cut is from $24 down to $19, and for 1,001 to 2,000 MB the cut is from $42 down to $29 per month. Additionally, pricing for data beyond those limits has been cut, from 2.25 cents per extra MB down to 1.5 cents per extra MB, which means 1 GB of extra data is $15.
Additionally, Ting dropped the pricing on minutes beyond 2,000 per month from 2 cents to 1.9 cents. The company also raised the ceiling on the minutes for its "XL" plan to 2,100 and raised the ceiling on its the "XL" messages bucket to 4,800.
Ting offers minutes, text messages and data in different buckets, and customers can share usage across multiple devices. If customers use more than they have paid for in a certain month, they are not charged an overage fee, but instead are bumped up to the next usage tier for that month. Likewise, if customers use less than they had thought they would need, they are bumped down to the next lowest usage tier and will receive a credit on their bill for the difference. Users can continuously monitor their usage via an online dashboard.
Ting said current customers do not need to move to a new plan to take advantage of the new pricing.
"We have a very simple business model. We invest heavily in engineering and customer support. We spend comparatively little on marketing," Michael Goldstein, Ting's vice president of marketing, wrote in a company blog post. "We take nothing on devices. We take a fair margin on service. We offer the best prices and the best experience we possibly can. We hope that you stick around and tell your friends."
By the standards of other MVNOs, Ting is still small, but the service is growing. Ting said it has now surpassed 50,000 accounts and 80,000 devices on the service, up from 36,000 accounts and 56,000 devices as of the end of September. Customers added 1.5 devices per account in the third quarter and Ting ended the third quarter averaging 1.6 devices per account across its base.
For more:
- see this release
- see this Ting blog post
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