New plans to end data overages at AT&T
Change comes amid a renewed increase in competition among wireless carriers
The era of telecomNEW YORK munication carriers charging you once you top the data limit is coming to a close.
Wednesday, AT&T announced new Mobile Share Advantage plans that won’t charge you extra for going over your data limit, instead slowing down your data for the remainder of your billing month. The plans come with other changes — they strip out the cheapest, offering more data for higher prices, while lowering the cost for some higher data plans.
AT&T is likely betting consumers will switch to get rid of annoying charges when they go over the limits. They’re following in welltrodden footsteps: T-Mobile, Sprint and most recently Verizon have eliminated what’s known as overages for consumers in new plans. Verizon is the only one to charge for the feature, with a $5 fee to enable “Safety Mode.”
The change comes amid a renewed increase in competition among wireless carriers, led by aggressive plays by T-Mobile and Sprint to lure customers. Those moves have worked. In the most recent quarter T-Mobile added 1.12 million phone customers, and AT&T added 185,000.
Similar to the other carriers, AT&T will slow users’ speeds to anemic, 2G-like speeds of 128kbps — on par with other carriers — until the end of the customer’s billing cycle or until the user decides to upgrade to a larger plan. With those speeds, users can check email or do light browsing on the Web, but video watching and other data hungry tasks will be painfully slow. AT&T declined to comment further.
Currently AT&T charges customers more if they use more data than they’ve signed up for under their tiered plans. For instance, under AT&T’s current Mobile Share Value plans, the company charges $20 for an additional 300MB on its 300MB plan or $15 per additional 1GB on its larger plans. AT&T will still send text messages to alert users when they are at 75%, 90% and 100% of their monthly data bucket (or at 90% and 100% for businesses).
As part of the new Mobile Share Advantage, AT&T is also revamping its data offerings. The smallest and cheapest 300MB and 2GB plans ($20 and $30 per month, respectively) will be going away. They’ll be replaced by 1GB plan for $30 per month and a 3GB plan for $40 per month. The 5GB for $50 plan will be replaced by a new 6GB for $60 option.
Users happy with existing plans don’t need to switch to the new plans, though they won’t get the benefit of avoiding charges for exceeding data allowances.