Summary
- T-Mobile has been restricting bundled services like streaming memberships for a while, upsetting customers who value free high-quality content.
- Hulu On Us promo codes are now linked directly to T-Mobile accounts, but still don’t stack with upgrades.
- Only top-tier plans like Go5G Next include free Hulu, Apple TV+, and Netflix with commercials, reflecting a shift towards fewer perks.
Once eager to show consumers that phone plans could give you more than minutes and data, T-Mobile has continued implementing restrictions on bundled services like streaming memberships. While relatively minor perks, users notice when they get free, high-quality content, and access gets more difficult, like when T-Mobile recently dropped the Disney+ perk option.
For now, though, the tides have stemmed somewhat, and anyone T-Mobile gave a Hulu On Us promo code — that is, accounts that were preemptively eligible for Hulu before some perk changes — will now find Hulu linked directly to their T-Mobile account (Source: The Mobile Report via PhoneArena). Unfortunately, it still won’t stack with, for example, an ad-free upgrade, and this update only affects users already deemed worthy of the promo.
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Moving forward, only subscribers to T-Mobile’s top-of-the-line Go5G Next plan will receive a free, ad-supported Hulu subscription, although it and Go5G Plus also include Apple TV+ and Netflix with commercials. You can also, for the time being, still upgrade your included Netflix plan, paying T-Mobile an upgrade fee instead of the whole price.
The latest update is more confirmation that fewer perks is the new status quo. Go5G Next is a fine plan that connects you to the powerful network behind T-Mobile’s success compared to cheaper MVNOs. But it’s also around $200 per month for three lines — in other words, not for everyone. And if you are running a multi-line household, there’s a nonzero chance you’ll want to access all current 4K content, sometimes on more than two screens at once. You can’t do either of those with the entry-level Hulu or Netflix plans.
Subscription numbers haven’t started to drop yet, but the public is increasingly frustrated with questionable content selection and networks’ lack of commitment to their own quality productions. With some users getting fed up and hopping between platforms as they run out of new stuff to watch, maybe untethering from a single streaming service is for the best. That’s what the un-carrier’s bundle reduction implies, anyway.
