Introducing the T-Mobile Jump Plan

At today’s “Boldest Moves Yet” T-Mobile conference in Manhattan, the company’s CEO John Legere unveiled the mobile carrier’s newest effort to lure in customers away from AT&T and Sprint. T-Mobile Jump will let users pay an extra $10 a month for two phone upgrades per year.

Standing for “Just Upgrade My Phone,” Jump is a pretty cool idea for those of us who love getting the latest gadgets and chafe at having to wait for upgrade subsidies every two years. As we all know well by now, phone prices are lower for new customers or those who renew their contracts because mobile carriers subsidize the actual retail costs that you’d pay if you bought the device off the shelf. Legere’s plan with Jump is to change the paradigm to allow users to trade-up for cooler, newer phones more often at the subsidized prices.

Interestingly, the $10 per month fee isn’t just to allow users to upgrade phones—it also covers “lost, stolen, damaged, or malfunctioning phones,” according to the Verge’s live blog coverage of T-Mobile’s event. Now, I have Sprint, and I pay roughly that much for insurance on my phone—and if I want to use it if my phone breaks, I have to drop a hundred dollar deductible on the table to get a replacement or something comparable. T-Mobile’s plan looks like it’s a step ahead of that, bundling insurance costs with the possibility of upgrading at least twice a year. Yes, you’ll have to pay a deductible for lost or broken phones—somewhere ranging between $20 and $170, according to a Q&A session at the end of the event—but the ability to upgrade your phone twice a year whether it’s broken or not on top of that is pretty huge.

While I don’t foresee too many users taking advantage of two upgrades a year, I do see at least one upgrade a year happening pretty easily. To be completely honest, I’m having a hard time not imagining myself investigating what T-Mobile’s got to offer.

Basically, as soon as I’m done with this post, I’m going to start scoping out T-Mobile’s plans and phones. This is definitely a huge selling point for me, and I imagine that when more people hear about it, the mobile carrier may see a considerable upswing in new contracts.

In addition to Jump, T-Mobile also announced that it would start offering the Sony Xperia Z starting today for a hundred dollars, while the Nokia Lumina 925 would launch on July 17 for fifty bucks. In addition, the company just announced a four-line family plan with unlimited talk, text, and data for a hundred dollars a month.

What do you think about Jump? Are you starting to think about making a jump to T-Mobile?