T-Mobile has been on a campaign to change how the wireless industry works by ditching contracts, rethinking upgrades and even making International roaming charges a thing of the past. Now, hot on the heels of the iPad Air announcement, T-Mobile wants to change how carriers sell tablets as well.

T-Mobile announced today that it will be carrying the iPad Air and iPad Mini on November 1 alongside the rest of the big carriers. Unlike those carriers, however, T-Mobile will be selling the iPad Air and iPad Mini for $0 down. Instead, customers will be enrolled in T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plan that allows them to pay it off over the course of two years.

To sweeten the deal even further, T-Mobile will be offering every person who buys an iPad through T-Mobile free data for life. To be more specific, these customers will receive 200MB of free 4G LTE data a month for as long as they own the iPad Air or iPad Mini. T-Mobile notes that they don’t even have to be a T-Mobile customer to take advantage of this deal. Consumers just have to buy the iPad through them and they get the free data.

“When you buy a product as amazing as iPad, you should be able to connect when and where you want, simply and affordably,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “By offering free data for life with incredible upfront pricing, T-Mobile is un-leashing customers to fully enjoy iPad as it was meant to be enjoyed – mobile and connected.”

Now, that’s all well and good, but 200MB is nowhere near enough data for the iPad user that’s constantly on the go. For them, T-Mobile will offer 500MB of 4G LTE data for $10 a month. The price goes by $10 for every 2GB you add on. The carrier will also be selling day and weekly passes, with a 500MB a day going for $5 and 1GB a week going for $10.

“Tablets are supposed to be un-tethered like smartphones, but it hasn’t worked out that way because people know carriers will charge them an arm-and-a-leg for mobile data,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “Carriers figured out a long time ago that they could make money – a lot of money – by forcing customers into restrictive, overpriced data plans. We changed it for smartphones and we’re changing it for tablets.”

Interestingly enough, T-Mobile CEO John Legere and CMO Mike Sievert took to Twitter to announce all of the above news and answer questions directly from consumers. Here are some of the answers.

In response to how much one can do with 200MB of data:

. @jasonlee you can do roughly 2500 emails, 800 instagrams, 200 vines, 200 minutes of streaming.

— T-Mobile (@TMobile) October 23, 2013

Do you have to buy your tablet through T-Mobile?

.@jeremykeane Yes! Every person who brings their tablet to @TMobile gets the 200MB!

— T-Mobile (@TMobile) October 23, 2013

One eagle-eyed Twitter user spotted that Apple didn’t list T-Mobile’s HSPA+ frequency (1700MHz) on its list of supported frequencies of the iPad Air. What’s up with that?

Yes it is, it's compatible. The new ones support all of our frequencies. These were built with @TMobile in mind.

— T-Mobile (@TMobile) October 23, 2013

T-Mobile ended this admittedly strange Twitter “press conference” with a few cheeky jabs at the competition:

Q: Will @ATT and @Verizon copy @TMobile again?

— T-Mobile (@TMobile) October 23, 2013

Something to leave you guys with. Be sure to RT so the competition can see 😉 pic.twitter.com/nJjeYq5QPC

— T-Mobile (@TMobile) October 23, 2013

[Image: Apple]