New 'Framily Plans' from Sprint Designed to Offer Huge Savings

No I did not misspell the headline. It does, in fact, say “framily” and not family. There is a reason for that. While the name does not necessarily roll off the tongue, it is what Sprint is offering.  Framily is supposed to be a portmanteau of “friends” and “family,” with the intent on bringing some family-plan-like savings to groups of friends.

This new plan is basically available to everyone. Both new and existing customers can take advantage of the plan. It gives customers the ability to add up to 10 individuals to a given plan. The part of the plan that is designed to reel in new customers is that the more people you add to the plan, the more money you can save.

Let’s take a look at how the Framily Plan would work. The first customer pays $55 a month for the first line of service. This will get them unlimited voice service, text messaging and 1GB of data. Now for each additional new Sprint customer that joins the Framily Plan, the cost per person for the service goes down $5 a month. Potentially, this could add up to a maximum monthly discount of $30 a month.

Sprint describes the plan as follows, if you have a group of at least seven people, the service costs $25 per month per subscriber. If you compare this to similar plans on AT&T, it would cost $70 a month per subscriber and a similar plan on Verizon is $90. T-Mobile subscribers who get a 500MB data plan with unlimited voice and text messaging would pay $50 a month on a comparable plan.

If you need additional data, and let us be realistic, if you have seven people on your plan you will need more than 1GB of data, you can pay an additional $20 per month per line to add unlimited data. Another part of the Framily Plan allows users to upgrade to a new phone every year at the price point.

What the last part of that sentence means is that the biggest restriction on this plan is that it is not for subsidized devices. That means that you will need to pay full retail phone prices in order to get started.

In a statement, Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, said "The Sprint Framily Plan redefines the way we think of family plans and gives our customers the power to decide who will be a part of their group and gain greater savings as more members are added. Sprint continues to be a leader in offering customers choice, flexibility and value. The Sprint Framily Plan makes Sprint the best choice for families and friends."

Since early last year when T-Mobile unveiled its Uncarrier plan, a new twist was thrown into the mix. We have seen other carriers like AT&T offer the Next Plan; today we have the Framily Plan. Who knows what we can expect as 2014 moves forward.

On another note, Sprint also announced that it would be expanding its 4G LTE network to Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas as well as to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The company now offers its fastest speed network with download speeds up to 60Mbps in 11 markets.

In addition to expanding its 4G LTE network, Sprint also announced that customers of its prepaid brand Virgin Mobile who sign up for the Broadband2Go service using the Netgear Mobile hotspot, will also be able to take advantage of Sprint’s 4G LTE network.