T-Mobile is taking it to the next level with expanded data plans

T-Mobile isn’t taking a breather. A day after quadrupling the amount of data customers can get on its Simple Starter plan, T-Mobile is at it again, expanding its Simple Choice family plan to 10 lines and offering to double the amount of dataat your disposal if you add a tablet. The moves represent a continued escalation of a war between T-Mobile and suddenly nimble Sprint, which is under the direction of new CEO Marcelo Claure, who took over earlier this month. Sprint, the third-largest wireless carrier by subscriber, and T-Mobile, the fourth-largest carrier, are both eager to add customers at each others’ expense, as well as from top players Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

T-Mobile would really like more people to pay for tablet data, and is sweetening the deal for those who do. While T-Mobile is still including 200MB of tablet data with any Simple Choice smartphone plan, for an extra $10 per month users can add a tablet data plan equal to what they get on their phones. In other words, if you have a 3GB per month smartphone plan, you can get an extra 3GB of tablet data for $10 per month. If you have a 5GB smartphone plan, you get 5GB of tablet data for the same $10. T-Mobile will start offering this package on September 3. AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, by comparison, don’t provide any free tablet data, and users must pay $10 per month to tap into their shared data allotment. This isn’t the first time T-Mobile has been aggressive about tablet data plans. Earlier this year, users could buy any 4G LTE tablet for the same price as the Wi-Fi model. For iPad buyers, that meant an instant savings of $130. T-Mobile was also temporarily giving away 1GB of free tablet data through the end of this year. Both of those offers appear to have been discontinued, however. Along with the new tablet plans, T-Mobile also announced a tweak to its family plans, letting families connect up to 10 lines instead of the previous five lines. T-Mobile family plans start at $50 for the first line, $30 for the second line and $10 for each additional line.