The two-year phone contract is almost dead. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sprint plans to stop offering contract phone plans by the end of 2015, focusing instead on off-contract, monthly plans. Sprint is the last of the major four carriers to start making major moves in this direction: T-Mobile first stopped selling contract plans two years ago, and Verizon joined it this month; AT&T still sells contract phone plans, but they’re harder to get than they used to be — you have to buy them through AT&T itself, not through a retailer like Best Buy.
Two-year phone contracts are almost dead
Sprint to end contracts later this year
Sprint to end contracts later this year
is The Verge’s executive editor. He has covered tech, policy, and online creators for over a decade.
Like its competitors, Sprint has been slowly shifting away from contracts and over to smartphone payment plans. Payment plans — which break up the cost of a smartphone across monthly payments — allow carriers to keep customers on something resembling a two-year contract while still presenting them with lower service prices and the ability to cancel service and change plans when they want to. It’s apparently a winning formula, as every major carrier is now making the switch. AT&T may not be all the way there yet, but at this point, it’s only a matter of time.
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