T-Mobile’s prepaid arm offers up free Facebook mobile access — no data plan required

You can’t escape Facebook these days — even if you don’t have a data plan.

T-Mobile announced today that its GoSmart Mobile prepaid brand will offer free access to Facebook and Facebook Messenger to all customers, no matter if you have data or not.

The offer is great for just about everyone involved: Facebook gets in front of more eyes; T-Mobile gets a killer feature to sell its prepaid line; and consumers get a cheap and easy way to access Facebook on the go. T-Mobile is the first U.S. carrier to offer such a deal, but like the carrier’s other recent innovations, you can expect competing prepaid carriers to follow suit.

GoSmart plans start at just $25 a month for unlimited talk access, and it offers a variety of inexpensive handsets for under $100. You can also bring an existing off-contract phone over to GoSmart. It’s unclear at this point how fast the free Facebook service will be — I wouldn’t bet on unfettered 4G access. You can still browse Facebook with a slow 2G connection (as long as you’re not watching videos), and that’s also fast enough to maintain Facebook Messenger conversations.

The free Facebook access will begin in January. All GoSmart customers need to do is log into Facebook’s mobile app or website to connect.