Advertisement

Virgin Mobile first prepaid US carrier with LTE data sharing plans

If your family can't agree on anything, a mobile data sharing plan on a two-year contract may not be the best idea. Virgin Mobile USA will now let you part company quickly if need be with its latest offering: prepaid 4G family data sharing plans, now available at Walmart. You can go month-to-month for $65 with two lines sharing 4GB or up to $115 with four lines and 12GB total of LTE data. The latter plan works out to a tempting $28.75 per month per person, with each member getting a 3GB share per month, provided nobody pigs out on data. T-Mobile, AT&T and others offer no-contract plans already, though all are post-paid, month-by-month services. The possible negative to Virgin's prepaid plan is that you'll be on Sprint's mobile network, which is far and away the slowest in the US.

Update: As pointed out by a reader, Virgin is far from the first no-contract carrier, as AT&T, T-Mobile and others have shared no-contract plans. However, Virgin claims it's the first prepaid carrier with such an offering, so we've updated the post with that info. Thanks Seth!

[Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]