Sprint's 4 day promo offers unlimited talk, text and data for $50 a month (update: extended til end of March)

Updated (2/1):

It seems that Sprint has had a change of heart. What was supposed to be a very short four-day promo has now been extended considerably, all the way until the end of March. 

Original:

Sprint’s latest promotion may be one of its best yet, but it’s only going to last for a short while. From now until Monday, Jan. 30, the wireless carrier will be offering a plan that will cost just $50 a month for unlimited talk, text and data on its network for one line.

This new move is a direct response by Sprint to an earlier offer made by Verizon Wireless. It recently began a promotion that gave customers 5GB of data for $55 a month. In Verizon’s ads for this deal, the carrier seemed to suggest that having an “unlimited” plan was a waste of money, claiming that the vast majority of its customers don’t use more than 5GB of data every month.

In today’s press release announcing this move, Sprint said that 5GB of data a month simply is not enough in today’s world where streaming video can take up a lot of bandwidth. It claims that users could take 5GB of data just by watching seven episodes of House of Cards on Netflix at its standard resolution, and if it switches to HD, Netflix can use up to 3GB of data per hour. Even doing normal things like browsing on the web can take up 50Mb of data in just one hour.

In addition to the $50 unlimited plan, Sprint is also offering people a way to get two lines with the same plan for $90 a month, with each additional line costing $30 a month. There are some caveats to this deal. Video streaming is limited to 480p resolution, and music streaming is also limited to 500kbps. Playing streaming games is limited to 2Mbps. Finally, if you sign up for this plan, the price will go up to $60 a month after March 31, 2018.

Sprint certainly wants to stick it to Verizon, which does not offer any unlimited plans for new customers, and this may be an effective promotion for doing just that. What do you think of Sprint’s latest offer and its response to Verizon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!