I can’t even believe I’m typing this up so soon after T-Mobile’s latest price hike, but the “Un-carrier” (or what’s left of it) is preparing to increase its monthly charges again. Technically, your plan’s “base” rate will not go up this time around, with Magenta instead taking advantage of the oldest trick in Verizon and AT&T‘s book to make you pay more money.
That’s right, T-Mo is increasing a fee you might remember from a 2024 class action lawsuit. The “Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee” (now that’s a mouthful) will jump from $3.49 to $3.99 for voice lines and from $1.40 to $1.60 for data-only lines on April 24, and if that doesn’t sound like a lot to you, it’s probably because you haven’t taken a small detail into consideration.
This is a fee that applies to every individual line (including free lines) on your account every month, so the $0.50 and $0.20 hikes per line can definitely add up to an uncomfortable sum after a while. Perhaps more importantly, this price fee increase will likely impact all T-Mobile customers equally, regardless of how long you’ve been with the operator and what plan you’re on. And yes, that means all those folks affected by T-Mo’s highly publicized price hikes from last year and just last week need to brace for impact once again.
As explained on T-Mobile‘s official website, the Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee is “not a government tax or imposed by the government.” That obviously doesn’t tell you exactly what this tax is, and Magenta doesn’t offer a lot of clarity by further “explaining” that the “fee is collected and retained” to “help recover certain costs” the carrier has “already incurred and continues to incur.”
