Roger Fingas
AT&T is briefly resurrecting the concept of an unlimited data plan for its smartphone customers, but with the catch that subscribers must also have DirecTV or U-verse TV, and pay a high monthly fee.
The new Unlimited Plan (link currently non-functional) costs $100 per month for a single smartphone, and an extra $40 for each additional phone line, AT&T said on Monday. A fourth one can be added for free, though the discount is only being credited back after two billing cycles.
The carrier is generally charging $40 per tablet. People can, however, opt to pay $10 instead and get just 1 gigabyte of data. Cellular-enabled smartwatches and some other "connected devices" cost $10 to add.
The plan will only be available for a limited time, though it can be kept after the promotional period ends.
AT&T has fought to push customers off of its older unlimited data plans, which were officially nixed for new subscribers in 2010. Starting next month, fees for them will increase by $5 per line.
Until September the company was also throttling speeds for unlimited plans when data exceeded 5 gigabytes per month. It then shifted the ceiling to 22 gigabytes, also relaxing the conditions for throttling to periods of network congestion. This was likely in response to a $100 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission, accusing the company of misleading marketing.
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8 Comments
Yea, got the $5 dollar notice last week. They indicated they where doing me a favor --- '...our first increase in 7 years'.
Silly me--- I thought telecommunication costs were going down, not up!
In general, I'm not a big data user... I should figure out this quagmire of plans / prices (which I view, along with Cable plan prices as a complete obfuscation scam) and how my company discount applies.
Yea that's an f'ing ripoff! If you want the business AT&T then you need to cut that price in half at least especially if you want people to use your TV service and pay for that as well.
just another example of why I dropped att....
I am not going to pretend to understand the business model with these carriers. What I do know is I should have 1 data plan that takes care of all my devices for a low cost. To pay $50 for my phone plan (Business Plan with 300+phones on it), $10 for my iPad, $10 for my iPad Pro is crazy ($40 for unlimited). Laptops should have built in LTE also. I want to use my devices without worrying about "connecting". Should be seamless. This is another area where Apple needs to get this right for the users. To pay over $100 per month for data use is crazy. If I do the lower plan it is still $70 bucks for data which is nuts.