What Is T-Mobile Internet Lite & How Much Does It Cost?

T-Mobile is a well-established cell phone carrier that some have switched to for its $25 plan, but in 2021 it launched a 5G home internet service, adding more competition to the home internet field. However, not every home is eligible for T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet. In such cases, there's T-Mobile Home Internet Lite.

As long as a T-Mobile customer has access to the un-carrier's 4G LTE or 5G network, they can have access to the Home Internet Lite. There are bucketed data plans that start at 100GB and go as high as 300GB. Unfortunately, despite net neutrality rules coming back, the carrier will still slow down your internet speed as soon as you go over the data cap.

The T-Mobile website has a tool to help potential buyers decide how much data is right for them. While it might seem inaccurate because it separates "web browsing and emails" and "social media" into two different categories, it's going to give a better snapshot of your data usage than it would if it counted them as one category. Thanks to all the videos and pictures that people share on social media, whether you're using an app or a web browser, social media uses more data than checking emails.

T-Mobile's Home Internet Lite starts at $50 per month, which gives users 100GB of data per month. While that's a far cry from T-Mobile's cheapest phone plan, it's pretty fair for internet compared to other brands. As stated, if you go over your data cap, T-Mobile will throttle your internet speed to a snail's pace, which isn't good enough for a YouTube video at a quality higher than 360p. YouTube videos require an internet connection with at least 500Kbps.

However, if you use a lot of data in a month, there are additional tiers. You can increase your monthly data cap to 150GB for $75 per month, 200GB for $100, or 300GB for $150. If you require more than 300GB of data in a month, T-Mobile's estimator suggests, "Internet Lite may not be the right product for you based on your data usage."

Anyone who does more than simple web browsing on the internet is better off looking for a different provider. While it can be easier and more cost-effective to get internet through the same company that provides your phone plan, there's no point in using them if your demands are going to be throttled before the end of the month. Streaming and watching videos uses up the most data. According to T-Mobile's estimator, if that was the only thing a user did for five hours, it would use over 350GB, which is more than any plan it offers for the service.