Although Sprint's data plans are significantly cheaper than their competition, there was still some outcry when Sprint decided to charge a $10 monthly add-on charge to phones with 4G connectivity, even if your area isn't actually covered by their WiMax network. Now, however, all smartphones activated after January 30 will be subject to the same charge.

Sprint's reasoning - that “building, maintaining and expanding wireless data networks isn’t free" - is sound, and you can't argue that they still beat every other carrier when it comes to the price of their data plans. Data plans for the EVO 4G, Epic 4G, and EVO Shift 4G will remained unaffected as they are already subject to the fee. Now that all of Sprint's smartphones have the same data plan, anybody planning on picking up a 4G phone to replace their current one?

Source: Sprint