T-Mobile quietly retires its 'Free Data for Life' iPad promotion

With all the carrier pricing battles going on these days, T-Mobile has quietly scuttled its "Free Data For Life" promotion, which offered a decent (by 2013 standards) 200MB of cellular data per month for new iPad owners who activated their devices on its network. A T-Mobile support page says the promotion is no longer available as of May 7th, 2017, but anyone who signed up prior to that date will still be getting a 200MB monthly allowance from T-Mobile for as long as they keep the device.

Besides giving new iPad owners (and Verizon or AT&T phone subscribers) a taste of T-Mobile's network, the promotion reportedly jumpstarted iPad Air sales for the Un-carrier once Apple started selling the devices unlocked. Although the deal ran for about three and a half years, the company stopped promoting it alongside the most recent iPad upgrades. According to a statement sent to T-MoNews, the company recognizes that 200MB of data doesn't go very far in 2017's media-heavy internet and the carrier is now hoping to push users to its unlimited T-Mobile ONE plan. While those plans do offer unlimited LTE data for tablets as a $20 monthly add-on, users will have to go all-in with T-Mobile's phone service to get that price.