AT&T today announced a major change to its mobile rate plans.
The new Mobile Share Advantage plans will launch on Aug. 21. The new plans include the same features as AT&T’s current Mobile Share Value plans, like unlimited talk and text, Rollover Data, and mobile hotspot, but they make one big change: no overages.
With the Mobile Share Advantage plans, customers will not be charged an overage fee when they use up their monthly high-speed data allotment. Instead, customers will have their data speeds reduced to a maximum of 128kbps for the remainder of that billing cycle.
These new plans also have slightly different data bucket options and offer the ability to change your data allotment at any time during your billing cycle.
AT&T has tweaked the monthly access fee that you pay to attach your phone to a plan, too. Previously you’d pay $25 per month per phone on plans of 5GB or less and $15 per month on plans of 15GB or more. With Mobile Share Advantage plans, that rate is $20 per month no matter which plan you’re on. Customers on a two-year contract will pay a $40 per month access fee.
Here’s how the new Monthly Share Advantage plans break down:
AT&T will also offer larger buckets ranging from 40GB to 100GB per month if you need them. Business customers can go even larger with Mobile Share Advantage for Business plans that range from 25GB up to 200GB per month.
The big new feature of these Mobile Share Advantage plans are the fact that they don’t include overages. AT&T’s current Mobile Share Value plans charge a $15 per gigabyte overage fee when you use up your monthly data allotment, which is not an insignificant fee. That’s why it’s exciting to see AT&T dropping overages like other providers have recently, including AT&T’s own GoPhone service.
Are you going to sign up for one of AT&T's new Mobile Share Advantage plans?