Grandfathered into a legacy plan on T-Mobile? Enjoy it while it lasts

T-Mobile revealed today that users who are grandfathered into older plans on the carrier will soon be forced to move to newer plans.

Engadget broke the story and confirmed with T-Mobile that it's doing away with more aged plans starting next month.

The new plans offered to grandfathered T-Mobile users will be roughly equivalent to what they have now, according to the carrier.

Existing users will still have access to unlimited data plans, so the purpose of this move is not to do away with those. It's for the sake of simplicity, T-Mobile said in a statement.

Change doesn't have to be that hard

"Maintaining thousands of rate plans is the norm in the industry, but we think it creates unnecessary complexity," T-Mobile's statement read.

"Simple is better, which is why we're reducing the number of older plans in our systems. We're giving customers on these plans the opportunity to choose a plan that best meets their needs. For the vast majority, their plan will provide similar or better features at a comparable price."

T-Mobile users have reportedly already begun receiving notices in the mail alerting them of the change.

It seems existing T-Mobile users may also be offered special rates not available to new customers, though the details aren't confirmed.

In addition, affected T-Mobile customers will have the option to cancel their service without the usual penalty fees if they do so by Feb. 21, 2014.

We had a few questions for T-Mo ourselves, and while the carrier did not address them directly, a representative did add that the company is "proactively reaching out to customers to give them the opportunity to choose a plan that best meets their needs" and that "only a small number of customers will experience a noticeable change."

• Far from killing unlimited data plans, T-Mobile is offering more and more - including unlimited international plans.