T-Mobile's new cheapest plan sounds like a dud

You likely won't get a phone deal with Base Essentials

You might want to look out for the bare necessities — the simple bare necessities — coming to T-Mobile shortly as it seems a new postpaid plan is set to round out the low end of its offerings.

Word first got out on the T-Mobile subreddit before getting some confirmation with The T-Mo Report surfacing an internal graphic about the upcoming Base Essentials plan which will join the existing Essentials, Magenta, and Magenta Max packages.

The positive bullet points include:

• Unlimited talk and text
• 20GB of high-speed data
• Unlimited hotspot at 600kbps (3G)
• Unlimited talk, text, and 2G data in Mexico and Canada
• Texting to 210+ regions
• Paramount+ for 1 year
• T-Mobile Tuesday perks

Which sounds nice for $45 per month on a single line. It's $80 for two, $100 for three, and $120 for four, the maximum allowed under the plan.

That said, as Base Essentials is pulling up the rear of the portfolio, there are more thorns here than anywhere else, including:

• After 20GB of use in a month, a persistent throttle policy of 1.5Mbps is applied (not based on traffic)
• There are no discounts for AutoPay enrollment
• As with Essentials, taxes and fees are not included in the advertised price
• The plan is ineligible for most device promos and all plan promos such as the ongoing "3rd Line Free" campaign — three lines on the better Essentials plan currently costs $10 less
• You'll presumably still need a credit check if you plan on financing a new device anyway

T-Mobile's own-brand prepaid service offers a $50 plan with unlimited data, if you're looking just for that. Heck, Metro by T-Mobile's $50 plan includes 100GB of Google One cloud storage.

But some people are just too particular to be convinced that they need to pay $5 more a month for services they might not use. And T-Mobile is all too particularly keen to serve them with this new plan.

No word on when we'll see the plan go public.