Gadgetory

the fight over your mobile business is getting heated in the same week that Verizon began offering an unlimited data plans t-mobile and Sprint striped back to beef up their unlimited offerings things are changing fast but to make sense of it all here's the breakdown of current unlimited plans for the major US carriers on Verizon $80 gets you one unlimited plan for one line and you can get this on four lines for a hundred and eighty dollars t-mobile's unlimited plan starts at 70 bucks and four lines will cost a hundred and sixty dollars Sprint's unlimited starts at $50 and five lines not four is just 90 dollars in total that's obviously the cheapest but Sprint's pricing will only last a year after March of 2018 this deal changes it'll cost more roughly the same price as t-mobile AT&T is the oddball right now the only way to get unlimited plan is if you also subscribe to DirecTV our u-verse TV services it starts at around $100 for one line and four lines will cost you one hundred and eighty dollars which is close to Verizon's prices when you're comparing prices though remember there will be additional fees and taxes added to the bill except for t-mobile they fold all that into their advertised prices of course you also have to take Network quality into consideration Verizon and AT&T are the largest but it doesn't always mean they are the best where you live t-mobile is ranking high in many reports these days and keep in mind unlimited is not truly unlimited the fact is if you gobble up data all of these networks are gonna slow you down for example on Verizon if you use 22 gigs of data your speed is going to take a hit and other customers will be given preference over you if the network is congested throttling limits are about the same for every carrier but t-mobile offers the most leeway and waits until you hit 28 gigs right now all of the carriers are including HD video streaming in their plans that didn't used to be the case Verizon t-mobile and Sprint also now include the same hotspot perks offering ten gigs of high-speed data that you can tether to share with another wireless device AT&T once again though is the strange exception unlimited plans do not include mobile heathering LS connected to a smart car but as competition heats up let's hope the deals get even better networks are growing to handle more capacity and consumers are hungry for better unlimited deals as our apps and streaming habits just demand more data for cnet.com I'm Bridget Carey