s5blitzer

In case anyone who just took delivery of a vehicle with Audi Connect within the last 7 days; I just got word from the dealer / T-Mobile, the promo will end on Jan 17/18th. Essentially, anyone with this promo will be paying $12.50/mo for the next 36 months instead of the the $30/mo after the 6 months trial period. Caveat - promo must be signed up within 7 days of delivery.

I am aware of the pay as you go SIM option but it won't be streaming data all the time. With this T-Mobile package, you will have seamless 3G + hotspot features. Not sure whether there is throttling of bandwidth by T-Mobile after a certain level of data usage. I will defer additional thoughts/opinions to the existing wisdom here.

Hope this helps!

AnimateMe

I took advantage of the promotion, but I had to ask my salesman specifically about it. After reading this forum, I knew more about it than he did. He had to do his research before he could help me.

But now that I have it, I do have one small concern:

There are multiple reports that T-Mobile/Audi may begin offering 4G LTE in the near future. If that happens, and we are locked into a three-year contract for the 3G service, I wonder if we will be stuck.

Jatmobil

You are stuck with the 3G MMI. Unless ofcourse you plan to move into a new Audi with the 4G/LTE MMI and take your T-mobile account with you. Even then, I believe the 4G MMI would be able to work in 3G mode!

AnimateMe

Makes sense. Upgrade to 4G LTE would be hardware change and not simply a software update. The 3G seems to work fine for Google maps, etc. But I find it painfully slow as a hotspot.

PJRed2008

What do you think you need 4G for in a car? Just curious.

Ltdplus9

What is the reasoning behind not offering this deal to all? From a business perspective, I really don't understand what the rationale could be.

AnimateMe

I find T-Mobile's 3G speed to be subpar, particularly when I'm using it as a hotspot. Admittedly, I don't use it all the time, but if I'm paying for it anyway…

mikem33

The 3G in the Audi is horrific. I tried to download an issue of Time magazine onto my kindle; in wifi coverage at home, at takes about 45 seconds to a minute; in the car, it took a full 25 minutes to download the same. Same download using my phone's 4G: 50 seconds. So at least for the wifi hotspot in the car, the 3G we got is completely useless. Try browsing any content-rich webpage using the 3G in the car and you'll quickly become frustrated.

Having said that... I don't often use the WiFi hotspot (as I am usually driving) and all our family phones have data plans. But once in a while, the kids use the WiFi with ipads and they, too, complain about the slowness of it all.