AT&T Resurrects The Unlimited Data Plan, With A Catch

Roughly 6 years ago, AT&T announced they were done with unlimited data effectively ending a near decade old practice within the wireless industry. Today, they announced plans to bring back unlimited data plans for AT&T subscribers, but with one interesting catch. 

Starting January 12th, new or existing AT&T DirecTV or U-Verse TV subscribers qualify for the new plan pricing. The plan is a bit pricey, but for the heightened cost, users get unlimited talk, text, AND data for all your browsing and streaming needs. The base cost for one smartphone on the plan is $100 (plus device costs), and $40 per additional line. Tablets are also $40 per line, wearables are $10, basic and quick messaging devices are $25, and “select” connected devices will also be $10. This announcement comes days after AT&T announced they were killing off 2 year contracts for subscribers, and could be most certainly looked at as a countermeasure to T-Mobile’s UNcarrier initiatives and Verizon’s new No Regrets promo.

This is also a pretty ingenious move on behalf of AT&T considering they now own one of the largest television subscriber bases with DirecTV. With more and more people using video streaming on the go, this seems to be a solid option for those with higher streaming demands.

Here’s a quick chart detailing the pricing breakdown of the new AT&T Unlimited Data Plans:

Pricing includes $60 per month plan charge plus per device access charge.

The most interesting piece behind these new plans is the fact that AT&T’s often controversial throttling policy is still in effect. After 22GB of data use on a line, AT&T may slow your speed down on that line, until the end of the current billing period. Which is pretty decent I guess, considering the throttling is based on the line’s usage and not the total account usage. Either way, it’s good to see wireless carriers doing things to stay competitive amongst each other.

via AT&T