Free Sprint cell service for 1 year

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Sprint is offering free unlimited cell phone service for 1 year* (*not entirely free as there is a $1.99 admin fee and some taxes) for customers switching from post-paid AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon service. While Sprint’s coverage map isn’t as strong as its competitors, free is still a great price (and might be worth it for free mobile hotspot service alone). I haven’t dug into the terms of this offer, but thought it was worth making readers aware.

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The Deal

  • Free unlimited talk, text, and data for 1 year
  • No contract, no activation fee

Key Terms

  • Hard credit pull required for activation
  • Bring Your Own (compatible) Phone
  • Must buy a SIM card ($2.99 + $10 shipping or pick up in-store for free)
  • Must own your phone
  • Must sign up at sprint.com/1yearfree by 6/30/17

Eligible Phones

Sprint’s service runs on a different technology than AT&T/T-Mobile, so not all phones will work on Sprint’s network. Any Verizon phone should work. In addition, the following phones should all be unlocked and compatible with Sprint:

  • Nexus 5 (Not supported from T-Mobile)
  • Nexus 5x
  • Nexus 6
  • Nexus 6P
  • Moto X Pure Edition
  • Samsung Galaxy S7 Special Edition
  • Samsung Galaxy S7 edge Special Edition
  • Samsung Galaxy S8 Special Edition
  • Samsung Galaxy S8+ Special Edition
  • Moto G4
  • Moto G4 Play
  • Moto G4 Plus
  • Moto G5 Plus

If you don’t have a Verizon phone or one of the phones above, you will probably need to buy a new phone for this deal.

Quick Thoughts

This might be a particularly good deal if you have a line that you don’t need with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile. You may even be able to add a line to one of those services just to switch it to Sprint — I don’t see any requirement as to how old the line needs to be to take advantage of this promo. For example, I recently decided to switch to T-Mobile and planned to port over my wife and I and two family members. We ported my number and my wife’s number and found that T-Mobile’s coverage is unfortunately still too limited for us. We’re going to go back to Cricket (or maybe AT&T to take advantage of the Amex Offer there). However, we have 2 T-Mobile lines with new numbers (since we never ported over the other 2 family members). I’m tempted to port one of those lines to Sprint just to use as a hotspot for a year. The hard credit pull kind of turns me off — we’ll see. Check out the fine print as I did not scour it too closely (Sprint’s coverage isn’t solid enough where I live to seriously consider this as our regular service). Best of luck if you make the switch!

Some of the key terms from sprint.com/1yearfree:

What is Sprint’s One Year Free Service Offer?

Bring your eligible phone to Sprint and get FREE Unlimited data, talk and text for one year. There’s no annual contract and you can keep your phone, number, accessories, photos, apps and music. It’s really that simple.

You’ll get Sprint’s fully-featured Unlimited including: 

  • Unlimited data, talk and text
  • HD streaming: 
    • Video at speeds up to 1080p 
    • Music at up to 1.5mbps 
    • Gaming streams at up to 8mbps 
    • Unlimited 4G LTE data for most everything else. Data deprioritization applies during congestion. 
  • 10GB of high-speed data per line to use toward mobile hotspot, VPN and Peer-2-Peer usage. Once your 10GB is used up:
    • Continue at up to 2G speeds (32 Kbps) on our network for no additional cost, or
    • Purchase more on-network high-speed data for $15/1GB to tide you over for the rest of your bill cycle

This introductory pricing:

  • Free service for 1 year for new customers who switch to Sprint and sign up on sprint.com/1yearfree between 6/9/17 and 6/30/17. Save until 7/31/18.
    • You’ll save more than $900 (compared to Verizon’s one-line unlimited rate plan) in the first year
    • Switch your whole family and save even more!
    • A standard $1.99 admin fee, $0.40 regulatory fee and other taxes and fees apply
    • Your $30 activation fee is waived as part of this promotion. The fee will appear on your first bill and a credit will appear within 2 bills.
  • Requires a Sprint SIM card, eBill and Sprint AutoPay ($5/mo./line discount applied within two invoices)
    • If AutoPay is cancelled, you’ll pay $5/mo./line
    • If AutoPay and eBill are removed, a $7.99/mo. charge will apply for Account Spending Limit customers
      • Your Spending Limit is the monthly maximum amount of spending per phone on your account based on your credit decision
      • For accounts with multiple phones, the total spending limit is calculated as the number of phones on the account multiplied by the spending limit per phone
  • You must own the phone(s) you’re bringing to Sprint.
  • After 7/31/18, pay:
    • Line 1: $60/mo.
    • Line 2: $40/mo.
    • Lines 3-5: $30/mo/line
    • Pricing shown with AutoPay. Add $5/mo./line without AutoPay
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