AT&T Imposes Another $5 Rate Hike On Grandfathered Unlimited Data Plans (arstechnica.com) 58
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: ATT is raising the price of its grandfathered unlimited data plans by $5 a month, the second such increase in the past year. The price increase affects longtime mobile customers who have held onto unlimited data plans for years after ATT stopped selling them to new subscribers. The latest price increase was reported by DSLReports yesterday, and ATT confirmed the move to Ars. "If you have a legacy unlimited data plan, you can keep it; however, beginning in March 2017, it will increase by $5 per month," ATT said. The unlimited data price had been $30 a month for seven years, until ATT raised it to $35 in February 2016. The price increase this year will bring it up to $40. That amount is just for data: Including voice and texting, the smartphone plans cost around $90 a month. ATT encouraged customers to move to one of its new plans, most of which have data limits, saying the newer packages "provide several benefits that our legacy unlimited plan doesn't." For example, the newer plans support mobile hotspot connections allowing a phone's Internet service to be shared with another device. ATT had stopped selling unlimited smartphone data to new customers and to customers who are switching plans, but last year introduced a new unlimited plan that's available only to people who also subscribe to DirecTV or U-verse TV.
Again (Score:4, Funny)
Re:AT&T -- pushing away their loyal customers (Score:5, Informative)
I was AT&T since before they sold off wireless to Cingular. Got tired of the iPhone and switched to a Nexus late last year, then I bit the bullet and dropped AT&T for Google's Fi service. My only complaint with Fi is that it just works for Nexus and Pixel phones. The service and cost structures are incredibly refreshing (what do you mean I get credit back for unused data and don't get raped for overage charges???).
tl;dr: To hell with AT&T and the rest.
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Since I have a Real Computer with Real Internet, I don't use massive amounts of mobile data, so I went with Ting and am pretty happy with the sub-$20 bills so far.
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I was AT&T since before they sold off wireless to Cingular
That only sort of happened. AT&T Wireless was already spun off from AT&T when it was sold to SBC/Bellsouth (Cingular). Then SBC bought AT&T and renamed itself AT&T. Then bought Bellsouth and renamed Cingular to AT&T.
Chart form: https://www.att.com/Common/mer... [att.com]
Video explanation: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/vid... [ebaumsworld.com] (Sorry, no longer on Youtube)
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I'm in the same boat - been an AT&T customer since before Cingular. Unlimited data has been pretty much the only reason I've stayed there this long. Now they're trying their best to get rid of me. It may just work.
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Now they're trying their best to get rid of me. It may just work.
How? By only charging you 1/2 the price and giving you unlimited data?
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I was on the grandfathered plan but when you realize that the "Unlimited" plan is really just a 2GB or 3GB plan (they've changed it a couple times), and then throttling down to EDGE speeds the other plans are just cheaper, since this is what their other plans do as well. And "free" unlimited texting (a $20 add-on to the grandfathered plan). And you can hotspot. And unlimited voice. And you can add additional phones for pretty cheap.
There really is no reason to hang on to those grandfathered plans unless
Re:AT&T -- pushing away their loyal customers (Score:4, Informative)
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Good luck in finding a real unlimited data plan elsewhere. New real unlimited data plans do not exist as far as I know.
I have an unlimited sprint hotspot. I use it as my only internet. It's not super fast where I live but it's the only thing that really works in the somewhat rural area I live in. I get about 1-2 meg down and 2-4 meg up (yes, faster upload for some strange reason). I only use about 50GB/month but I haven't noticed any slow downs at the end of the month so if there is a throttle, it either doesn't affect me in my area or it's above 50GB.
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AT&T will be raising the rates every 6 months until it hits $100/mo like most other "not really unlimited plans"
This may really be their plan. The would upset a lot of customers if they jumped the price to $100/month or just kicked everyone off but by doing a gradual increase, people will gradually move to other plans and aren't going to freak out about $5/month jumps. A slow "boil a frog" strategy to not upset too many people and have a backlash.
I took AT&T's Advice (Score:5, Funny)
I thought AT&T had some great points advocating switching away from a low-priced, unlimited data plan - so I switched. I realize not everyone will agree with me, and for those who don't - you can keep AT&T.
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Modded troll for trolling AT&T. Ouch.
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I totally agree with this - we switched to Mobile Share Advantage and are saving $30 a month as we need to stay with AT&T until our phones are paid off. Much easier on our bill, we had rollover minutes but there were certainly months where we had to pay extra.
Bonus that we have tethering now, and I'm not worried about going over on data - it'll just get slow and I've got WiFi everywhere that I need fast access. Heck, I'm pretty sure they were doing this before on my "unlimited" access anyway so why now
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I don't think that word means what AT&T thinks it means.
Old gets expensive.. That's what it means...
The market is apparently moving away from "unlimited" data plans now that the transfer rates are above ISDN limits....I guess the carriers are starting to realize that bandwidth/data transfer costs money and the only folks who are still on their "grandfather's" data plan are soaking up more than their share of the costs for little or no profit.
All these "grandfathered" plans should never have existed... AT&T was stupid to set any of the terms of a deal in
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You're wrong. Raising it $5 at a time is probably one the smartest things any company has ever done.
It helps them discover what people are willing to pay for a given amount of bandwidth (hint: they know how much each person is using).
This will help them optimize the prices of future plans for maximum profit.
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Any contract attorney would advise you NOT to do that. Apparently AT&T didn't listen to their lawyers or figured the good press now out weighs the eventual bad press later.
I don't see the problem, as long as they can raise the price to whatever they want. They are in complete control.
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My point here is that AT&T *should* have put time limits on all these contracts and never "grandfathered" them. Unlimited data should have been a time limited agreement that went away w/o the user renewing it with AT&T when the contract expired. That way they remain in control and can just stop offering Unlimited data plans any time they wished, wait for the current crop of existing contracts to expire and be done with the whole problem.
That would have eliminated the whole negative PR problem we h
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This is because mobile hotspot and tethering use are not allowed with unlimited plans (except for Connected Cars). If you want to use your device as a mobile hotspot or for tethering, you'll need to change your plan or move the device to a plan that supports mobile hotspot and tethering.
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Depends a bit on which European country, mind you.
In Denmark, a new plan called Plenti offers unlimited minutes, texts, and data for 119 DKR (approximately 17-18 USD) per month. If you tether they cap that data at 50 GB per month.
Meanwhile in Germany, just thirty minutes from the Danish border, Vodafone very kindly upgraded my phone's data plan last month from 200 MB per month to 500 MB per month, and I pay some 20 or 25 Euro (same in USD, basically) per month for that crap.
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Its pretty hard to get upset about our mobile phone prices when they're placed against the backdrop of our bankrupting and life destroying healthcare and college education prices.
Real reason AT&T raised the rates. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because Fuck You that's why.
Way to drive away your most loyal customers (Score:3, Insightful)
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This times a thousand. I've had my AT&T number since they were Cingular in 2005, and that was on my parents' account that had been AT&T since the early nineties - their first phone was AMPS, and I remember at age 6 or so them complaining about the new digital (D-AMPS) service's coverage range. I signed up for unlimited data for $20/mo on a Razr with HSDPA back in 2005 that I modded to have push IMAP and other smartphone-like capability years before the iPhone came out. AT&T is more expensive tha
Ahahaha! $5 really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Verizon hiked our unlimited prices by $20 you ATT UDPers have had TWO price hikes and you're still $10 short!
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I would literally love to see AT&T literally shit on your for using the word literally incorrectly.
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So assuming that what you mean by 'correct' usage applies - that would be what ? About 800 AT&T employees all lining up to take a dump on him one at a time ? Nasty...
Thank goodness he used the it correctly then. As per the dictionary.com:
4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually:
I literally died when she walked out on stage in that costume.
Here is Webster's (you know for your Americans):
2: : in effect : virtually
There are two things you should learn from this discussion.
Firstly - the common
My t-mobile plan (Score:2)
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Calendar Math is hard (Score:2)
ATT is raising the price of its grandfathered unlimited data plans by $5 a month, the second such increase in the past year..beginning in March 2017, it will increase by $5 per month," ATT said. The unlimited data price had been $30 a month for seven years, until ATT raised it to $35 in February 2016.
No, it's not the second increase in a year.