T-Mobile officially has taken its stance on shared data plans, and it does not approve. In fact, the Magenta carrier thinks they are “costly, complicated and punitive.” This is a strong stance for America’s 4th largest mobile network; however, they “set the record straight” by explaining why it doesn’t work the way it should:

“Unlike AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile does not plan on introducing shared family data plans and believes consumers will not benefit from that model. AT&T and Verizon shared family plans are:

• COSTLY – AT&T and Verizon are charging more for what consumers want by raising rates on data, but promoting the “value” by pointing to unlimited talk and text even though today many consumers use less of these services.
• COMPLICATED – both plans force customers to share data when many customers don’t know how much data they’re using, which makes it hard to stay within their limit when trying to balance multiple users.
• PUNITIVE – At the same time that AT&T and Verizon are making it harder for customers to manage overages, they are also charging overage rates of $15/GB for accounts with at least one smartphone.

Conversely, at T-Mobile we believe that:

• Customers who pay more, should get more – Rather than having to account for each device on a shared family data plan, T-Mobile customers can use their existing data plan to power multiple devices, while still saving hundreds of dollars annually.
• Data should be worry-free – With T-Mobile’s unlimited data plans, there is no surprise data cap or bill shock.
• Data plans should be flexible and affordable – At T-Mobile, customers have the option of only paying for the amount of data each member of the family believes they will need.”

– Harry Thomas for T-Mobile

Originally, everybody thought shared data would be a benefit to consumers. On the contrary, since they have been introduced, more people than not have criticized the plans, saying things almost identical to what T-Mobile has said, themselves. Verizon’s costs too much, especially if an individual plan is forced to upgrade, it becomes lost and shoots the price up by about $10-$20 a month. AT&T is simply hard to explain the pricing without calculators and mathematicians from NASA, but almost equals the value of Verizon’s plan.

What do you guys think? Does TMo have the right idea? Is this enough for you to switch to them, or consider it at least? Let us know in the comments!

Droid-Life via SlashGear