Sprint won’t charge users for FaceTime access, keeps its friendly image
When I think of Sprint, I usually think of it as the ‘friendliest’ carrier in the US: it currently has the cheapest plans, and those cheap plans also offer unlimited everything – including data. So when AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spilled the beans that his company may charge for FaceTime over its cellular network, Sprint came back a day later to save face and announce that it won’t.
The CDMA carrier’s announcement came by way of a statement that a company spokesperson made to The Wall Street Journal:
“We are committed to our unlimited data and that means not charging for data consumption based on the application.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Sprint’s stance on FaceTime. It’s just another application that uses data – which a carrier already charges its customers for – so there is no need for an additional charge on top of what customers are already paying. AT&T may not see it that way, but then again, it is AT&T.
Verizon, C Spire, Virgin Mobile, and other smaller carriers offer the iPhone, too, but they haven’t made their own statements on FaceTime access and the possible charges that it may bring; however, we’ll learn about them soon enough: iOS 6, the first version of iOS that makes FaceTime access over a cellular network possible, will be released sometime this fall.
[WSJ (subscription required) via MacRumors]