Sprint prepared to drop a promotion designed to lure customers from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US by offering to cut customers’ current bills in half.

Industry analyst Jeffrey Moore commented the deal was set to expire this week when Sprint unveils new price plans, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The demise of the promotion, which Sprint offered sporadically since 2014, was attributed to the introduction of a spate of unlimited tariffs by the operator’s rivals. This, Moore said, negated Sprint’s business model for the 50 per cent deal.

Sprint’s ‘Cut Your Bill in Half’ promotion offered to give customers the same allowances as specific AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile plans at half the price.

According to Moore, after sparking interest in the deal, Sprint would sell a larger data allowance to new subscribers so they ended up paying close to the price of their original tariff.

However, the last nine months saw a revisiting of unlimited data offers by US operators, which severely limits the appeal of selling additional allowances.

In August 2016, T-Mobile announced its One plan offering “unlimited everything” – a plan now upgraded to include improved access to HD video. Sprint then launched its own unlimited deal.

Earlier this year, AT&T expanded the availability of its unlimited tariff beyond just those who signed up for its DirecTV service.

During February, Verizon became the last of the large US operators to add unlimited to its tariff options, despite a number of its executives being vocally critical of the policy in recent years.