Amidst all of the hustle and activity of CES, Sprint has announced its latest attempt to draw people to the carrier that need multiple lines such as families. However, Sprint has added a new spin to the typical family plan by adding separated billing for each line, especially useful for people on family plans that want to add friends to their plan, but don’t want to deal with having to split costs on the bill each month.
Enter the Sprint “Framily Plan”.
For one line of service new Sprint customers will pay $55 per month per line for unlimited talk, text and 1GB of data. For each additional new Sprint customer that joins the Framily group, the cost per person goes down $5 a month up to a maximum monthly discount of $30 per line. With a group of seven people up to a maximum of ten per account, everyone gets unlimited talk, text and 1GB of data for $25 per month per line, excluding taxes and surcharges.
All members of the group can then customize their plan to meet their needs. For $20 per month per line, “Framily” members can also add unlimited data access, plus get a new phone every year through Sprint’s . Plan members can share the savings, without the hassle of sharing a bill, as each account can be billed separately, making costs easier to manage between users in the plan. The plan will launch this Friday, January 10th.
By adding multi-line accounts with separate billing support, Sprint is obviously going after a growing demographic of users with family plans that aren’t standard families, with many preferring to take out family plans to help friends who happen to either live in the same house or close, trusted friends that need a helping hand with cell service.
This new plan may also prove to be a boon for small businesses that are too small to qualify for the typical small business and enterprise offering, but still need a multi-line account with separated billing for accounting purposes with the 10-line account maximum. However, the offering is not without its caveats, as the discounts promised by the new offer will not be immediate and will take two billing cycles to be reflected on the account.
The idea of the “Framly” plan is clearly a take on Solavei’s (T-Mobile) current rewards program that they’ve had over a year now. Just like Sprint Solavei gives their members $5 (in cash, not discounts) for each person they refer. They don’t have a limit on how many you can refer too, so you can actually refer enough people to earn free mobile service and more.
And their unlimited plan starts at $39/mo.. in my opinion Sprints lagging behind.
-Steven