T-Mobile to offer new Prepaid monthly plans and hourly Web access option May 16th

I just received word of some new prepaid plans coming to T-Mobile on May 16th. The plans include:

• Unlimited Talk + Text for $50 per month
• Unlimited Text and $0.10/minute calling for $15 per month
• Hour Pass: $0.99 per hourly session for Web access for prepaid customers

While the prepaid plans sound attractive, the Hour Pass marks the first time that prepaid customers will have the ability to access the web. That's pretty cool!

I have to wonder if T-Mobile is planning on offering these plans since AT&T is going to be offering prepaid with the iPad that starts shipping tomorrow?

My guess is that there's going to be a pretty nice shakeup in the United States in the coming months with regards to prepaid and post paid plans. On the data front we have the launch of Sprint's HTC EVO, which will be the first 4G phone. Then we also have unlimited bandwidth consumption on Sprint's 4G network with the Overdrive. Of course, T-Mobile already got into the game a bit with their announcement earlier this week of throttled bandwidth.

In the end all of these changes are good for us consumers, so I welcome each and every one of them--so far.