In reality, prices steadily continue to go up as carriers cut prices on some services, but raise prices elsewhere or redesign pricing entirely to recoup any losses. While you might now save money on voice and text under AT&T and Verizon‘s new shared data plans, for example, you‘ll now pay more money for data and to simply connect your phone to the network. While you‘ll no longer pay a subsidy on your phone or sign a contract, you might wind up paying more for one of the carriers‘ new handset early upgrade programs or get dinged by a random new fee. That‘s not to say that a lot of what T-Mobile is doing competitively doesn‘t benefit users, but price competition is still intentionally being kept to a minimum by all parties involved in contrast to the press narrative.