Sprint goes all in on its unlimited data plan

For years, Sprint offered users willing to switch from another network a 50% discount on the price they had been paying. It was a great deal in most cases, but now that era is at an end, as Sprint has officially retired the promotion.

There's good news, though: The company reduced the pricing of its Unlimited Freedom plans, which are now $50 per month for one line, $40 per month for two lines, and $90 per month for three, four or five lines.

Sprint claims that, over a year, these prices are still half what you pay on Verizon or AT&T networks, so there's still a bit of that "50% off" spirit going on.

Like all other major U.S. networks, Sprint caps the mobile hotspot data at 10GB per line per month, after which it switches to 2G speeds. But the rest of it really does come close to being unlimited, including streaming video in HD resolution, streaming gaming (up to 8Mbps) and music (up to 1.5mbps), with unlimited high-speed data for "most everything else."

Officially, the new pricing is also a promotion that lasts a year, but we don't doubt Sprint will either prolong it or think of something else after March 31, 2018.

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that the rise of unlimited plans, which Sprint claims account for more than 90% of their user base, is precisely what drove the company to stop offering that "50% off" discount. Sprint's strategy was to lure customers in and then upsell them to a more expensive service later, but with so many customers already being on unlimited plans, there was nothing to upsell.

Sprint has been losing money for more than a decade, but it saw its customer base rise in the last two years, mostly thanks to the "50% off" deal. We'll see how the new strategy works for them.