While T-Mobile waits to see if AT&T can convince the justice system that the two companies should be allowed to merge, the smaller wireless provider has made a deal that could help it gain needed customers in case that deal falls through. Today, T-Mobile announced that it will offer a $30/month pre-paid plan exclusively through Walmart that will provide users with “unlimited” 4G data and texting.

You’re clever readers, so you no doubt noticed the quotes around “unlimited.” That’s because, like T-Mobile’s post-paid data plans, the data speed is throttled after you reach a certain threshold.

The $30 plan gets you the first 5 GB at “up to 4G speeds,” which of course doesn’t guarantee that you’ll ever actually receive 4G speeds in the first place. However, since 5GB is adequate for many smartphone users, the throttling won’t necessarily be an issue.

The other caveat is that the plan only includes 100 minutes of talk time. Anything over that and you’re paying $.10/minute. So this is a plan for people who choose e-mail, IM and text as their main form of communication.

Walmart will start offering the T-Mobile plans on Oct. 16.

Walmart and T-Mobile Introduce Exclusive No-Annual Contract 4G Offering [Marketwatch]

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