T-Mobile's new 5G initiative turns old tiered data plans into unlimited The carrier is getting rid of shared data buckets and adding a new promo to get people to upgrade to 5G phones. Listen - 03:55 Sarah Tew/CNET Have an old tiered or a shared data plan on Sprint or T-Mobile? It's about to become an unlimited plan. As part of its Un-carrier Next event on Wednesday T-Mobile announced that a new initiative it calls the "Great Unlimited Trade-Up." The premise of the new offer is simple: Put more people on unlimited plans even if they currently pay for shared or tiered data that only includes a certain amount of gigabytes of data in a month.