Parents and students, this one is for you. T-Mobile is giving away 10,000,000 hotspot devices to K-12 students in the United States, including Puerto Rico.
“I’m not gonna gate keep on this little ‘secret,’ I guess,” says Remmington Taylor (@remmingtontaylor) as she introduces this steal of an opportunity.
“T-Mobile is giving away 10,000,000 T-Hotspots, so basically these are mobile hot spots you can use if you work remotely [or] if you’re in a different state. It’s basically like mini wifi. It can connect to up to 10 devices,” Taylor explains.
Taylor’s video has 354 comments and 265,200,000 as of Saturday morning.
Why is T-Mobile doing this?
In 2020, T-Mobile launched a campaign called Project 10Million. As schooling became heavily virtual at the height of the pandemic, the project sought to make Internet accessible to students. Since 2020, the project has distributed about 6 million hotspots, according to EdTech Innovation Hub.
In September 2024, T-Mobile announced that it would be increasing the amount of internet allotted to the hotspot devices a month to 200GB from its previous 100GB allotment.
How to get a Free T-Mobile hotspot
While it’s not an extremely difficult process to get, there are some steps to follow to get the free T-Mobile hotspot. Parents need to be the ones to apply and need to have a student in K-12. Parents also need to prove that their students qualify for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) which offers free or reduced lunch to students. Other programs such as TANF and SNAP can also help qualify a student for the hotspot device. However, according to Taylor, all they had to do was submit a K-12 student ID.
If you are a parent with a student in Puerto Rico, all you need to do is submit your student’s report card since all students in the country are enrolled in NSLP, according to T-Mobile’s FAQs about the program.
You do not have to be a T-Mobile customer to apply.
Viewers weigh in
Taylor stirred up much excitement online when she shared this good news.
“BRUH college students get nothing,” one commenter said.
“I currently have this for my car for like 5months now!!!! We’re always on the road going somewhere so it works for my kid iPad and dead zones,” noted another.
“Just applied and was approved!!!! Just had to use my son’s report card thanks girl,” one user shared.
“I got mine a week before Hurricane Helene hit! And when my electricity and WiFi was in and out it came in clutch,” another wrote.
In today’s high-tech world that is increasingly more expensive, free wifi can definitely come in handy, especially for students. The Daily Dot has reached out to T-Mobile for comment via email and to Taylor via TikTok message and comment.
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