T-Mobile Gives AT&T Transplants A Free Year Of Hulu

A few weeks back, T-Mobile announced a new scheme to tempt mobile customers away from AT&T by paying for a year of DirecTV NOW through a series of bill credits. This gave those customers one of the perks of an AT&T plan without actually having to deal with AT&T. T-Mobile just decided to sweeten the pot a bit, announcing that those who switched from AT&T for the DirecTV NOW promotion are also eligible to receive a free year of Hulu as well.

Yes, that says "as well." Assuming you switched from AT&T during that DirecTV NOW promotion, you should soon be seeing a notification from T-Mobile that contains a code for your free year of Hulu. T-Mobile says that it will be sending out codes in the coming weeks, so if you don't see it right away, just sit tight.

The code you receive will be good for a year of Hulu's limited commercial subscription. As many of you will already know, the distinction between Hulu and Hulu Plus no longer exists because the free Hulu tier isn't available anymore. Hulu got rid of free streaming last year, and now offers two different subscription models to customers: limited commercials for $7.99 per month and no commercials for $11.99 per month.

Why is T-Mobile doing this? In its announcement, the company quotes a variety of different publications which claim that DirecTV NOW is currently in a sad state. With that in mind, T-Mobile decided to offer those who switched a subscription to a streaming service that "actually works."

Of course, someone at T-Mobile probably pointed out that using a competitor's product to tempt people into switching probably wasn't the best move, but we'll likely never hear about that angle in any official capacity. Still, free access to Hulu and DirecTV NOW is certainly better than access to just DirecTV NOW, so we doubt T-Mobile customers will care much about the motivation behind this decision.