US Mobile Adds Hotspot To Unlimited Starter Plan, eSIM For GSM, Automated Top-Ups

US Mobile announced a plethora of changes today via a Reddit post from its founder Ahmed Khattak. Hotspot has been added to the $25 Unlimited Starter plan and the amount of hotspot has been doubled for its mid-tier unlimited plan. ESIM has been enabled for GSM service, and 5G Standalone access has been enabled. The base shared data plan will now include 2GB of data instead of 1GB for the same $10 price, and automated top-ups are now available.

US Mobile's flagship $50 unlimited plan now includes native international roaming in 100 countries. And the free trial offer has been improved to include 50 days of 50GB premium priority data up from 45 days and 45GB. It also includes a $50 prepaid gift card for line 1, and $50 for line 2. Previously a $25 per line gift card was offered.

Not all changes are live on the US Mobile website yet, but will be later today (Update: they are now live). There are further details to dig into.

Unlimited Plan Changes

US Mobile's $25 "Unlimited Starter" plan includes 20GB of data at up to 5G data speeds before throttling to 1Mbps. It now allows for 5GB of data to be used for mobile hotspot. It did not offer any hotspot data previously.

The $40 for a single line "Unlimited Essentials" plan still includes 50GB of high-speed data before throttling, but now it allows for 10GB of data to be used for mobile hotspot. Prior to the update only 5GB could be used for hotspot.

Native International Roaming On Flagship Plan

The $50 for a single line Unlimited Premium plan remains at 100GB of high-speed data and 50GB for hotspot.

If you use the Unlimited Premium plan on the GSM network (T-Mobile) you'll now have native international roaming. That means you'll no longer need a separate eSIM profile to roam internationally. Instead, you can use your phone in 100 countries without having to do anything special to it and you'll have 10GB of data to use with 1,000 texts, and 500 minutes.

Shareable Data Plan Changes

US Mobile's base shared data plan costs $10 for a single line and the data allotment has been doubled to 2GB. Customers now have the ability to add automatic top-ups to their shared data plans. Subscribers can have their plans automatically topped up if they fall below 10% of what the base plan includes. Unused top-ups will rollover for one billing cycle.

The MVNO's $5 plan has also been improved to include taxes and fees. It still comes with 500MB of data, 2500 minutes, and 2500 texts. Taxes and fees brought the price of the plan up to $9 in some locations. So this is a big change. Update & Correction: Talk and text has been reduced to 500 minutes and 500 texts on the plan. The unlimited talk and text plan with no data also includes taxes and fees. It's now $7.5 with taxes and fees included in the price instead of costing over $12.

eSIM On GSM

US Mobile says that it has updated how its infrastructure is integrated into the T-Mobile network. The update allows for eSIM activations on T-Mobile instead of requiring a physical SIM card. This means that iPhone 14 and 15 can now be activated on the network. This will also allow customers to have both T-Mobile and Warp 5G (Verizon) based service all on one phone through the use of dual SIMs.

5G network standalone service on T-Mobile has also been enabled on compatible devices. US Mobile claims this will make data speeds on T-Mobile more comparable to what customers are able to get on Verizon. Khattak said the update allows traffic to route directly on the network now, which should result in much better latency and pings. T-Mobile based service still does not include priority data.

More Updates Planned, Include Offering AT&T Based Service

According to Khattak, several other big changes are planned for the coming weeks and months. One planned update is to add AT&T as a network partner.

US Mobile also plans to offer home phone plans, with a projected release occurring in October. Service is supposed to start at $10/month.

The Warp 5G network is also supposed to get native international roaming by the year's end. The free trial offer will be updated again to allow customers to trial service on both the T-Mobile and Verizon networks.

Customer account dashboards will also be improved to offer subscribers more granular control over their accounts. They'll be able to enable and disable features like parental controls, reset network settings, and reset voicemail passwords among other things. This may also lesson the likelihood a customer will need to contact support.

Finally, an even more premium unlimited plan is being worked on for a future release.

US Mobile's plan and network changes are overwhelmingly positive. Their already competitively priced service got even better, with more features and better value for the dollar.