NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - T-Mobile US plans tooffer free data downloads of up to 200 megabytes per month tocustomers who buy the latest Apple Inc iPad, as the No.4 US mobile service tries to lure cost-conscious customers awayfrom its bigger rivals.
Pricing at T-Mobile's rivals AT&T Inc and Sprint Corp will start at $14.99 per month for iPad data use, whileVerizon Wireless will kick off its iPad dataservice at $20 per month, Apple said on Tuesday.
AT&T's minimum monthly price covers data downloads of 250megabytes per month while Sprint will offer 1 gigabyte, or fourtimes more data for the same price. Verizon's entry level datapackage will cover 1 gigabyte of data.
T-Mobile, which will charge $30 per month for 2.5 gigabytesof data, declined to say whether customers who opt for the freedata service would have any other restrictions, such as dataspeeds. The company said it would provide more details during amedia conference call on Wednesday.
The operator has been pushing an aggressive marketing andpricing strategy to try to win over consumers since March thisyear. So far its strategy paid off with second quartersubscriber growth, which broke a four-year declining streak.
T-Mobile started selling Apple's iPhone only in April thisyear, and the latest Apple product will mark its entry into theiPad market. Apple on Tuesday unveiled the iPad Air - a slimmer,faster model of its tablet computer.