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Verizon Wireless is furthering its push to make older, legacy 5G cellular data plans less desirable to subscribers – this time by removing one of the top perks that kept many users aboard.

Following price hikes that were intended to make Verizon’s latest plans seem more desirable, the carrier has now resorted to phasing out two of the popular perks that accompanied older plans. Those include free access to Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass.

Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass are subscription services offered by Apple and Google respectively (who would have guessed?) that grant access to a catalog of mobile games from the App Store and Google Play Store.

Verizon announced its plans to stop offering the free perks to subscribers on certain legacy plans such as 5G Get More and 5G Play More in an email sent out this week, according to a report shared by MacRumors, and it’s set to start September 22^nd, 2025. After this date, it will no longer be possible to claim the perk.

Once the deadline comes and passes, Verizon Wireless subscribers on a legacy data plan that were taking advantage of this perk will start be charged for their use of these services, as Verizon will no longer pick up the slack.

Will this move get more of those legacy plan subscribers to upgrade to a newer plan, or perhaps even switch to another carrier with more perks? Only time will tell…

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/08/01/verizon-ending-apple-arcade-and-google-play-pass-perks-for-legacy-5g-data-subscribers/

In an announcement shared on Friday, the Magenta cellular provider T-Mobile said that its acquisition of UScellular was officially complete for the pretty sum of $4.3 billion.

T-Mobile first announced its plans to acquire UScellular back in May of last year, following an ongoing trend of buying up several other United States-based cellular service companies, including MetroPCS and Sprint, to beef up its own cellular network.

T-Mobile’s initial interest in UScellular was to expand the carrier’s wireless spectrum rights and enable the company to deploy better service in rural America without having deploy an entirely new cellular infrastructure.

Whether you’re an existing T-Mobile customer or UScellular customer, this will impact you with improved service. T-Mobile subscribers will soon be able to connect to UScellular data towers in places where T-Mobile’s own service may have been lacking. Moreover, UScellular subscribers will gain access to T-Mobile’s network coverage, T-Satellite, and 5G Home Internet services.

While UScellular subscribers won’t see any billing changes immediately, that could change in the future as T-Mobile will want to push those subscribers onto its own plans. It will entice a lot of people with the freebies that it has long offered, such as Netflix, Apple TV+, and MLB.TV, among other things.

T-Mobile has promised a seamless transition for T-Mobile and UScellular subscribers alike, so it will be interesting to see how this improves the experience for those on either side of the coin.

It’s worth noting that as T-Mobile acquires an increasing number of cellular providers in the United States, it reduces user choice and consolidates cellular data options. It’s surprising that regulators continue to allow this frequent of mergers, considering how this can impact competition and prices.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/08/01/t-mobile-completes-acquisition-of-uscellular/