AT&T Planning To Increase Price Of Grandfathered Unlimited Data Plan Next Year

Are you currently subscribed to one of AT&T’s old unlimited data plans? You might want to reconsider continuing to avail of these plans beginning next year. That is because the second biggest wireless carrier in the United States is planning to increase the price of its grandfathered unlimited data plan by February of 2016.

As reported by 9to5Mac, the wireless carrier recently announced that it is in fact going to be increase the price of its unlimited data plan by $5 a month, which means that the current price of $30 a month for AT&T’s unlimited data plan is now raised to $35 a month. Interestingly, the last time that AT&T made changes to the prices of its unlimited data plans was about seven years ago. 

All things considered, the $5 a month increase in the pricing of the grandfathered unlimited data plan may be manageable. But this price increase does set a precedent -- who knows what other price increase announcements lie in wait in the next few years, or even in the next few months? This line of thinking may make certain subscribers think twice about keeping their legacy unlimited data plans, and may even encourage them to try another option for good.

More and more major wireless carriers in America are trying to persuade their respective subscribers to shift away from unlimited data plans, and AT&T is certainly not an exception to this. AT&T, of course, is not the first to do it. As a matter of fact, only within this month, Verizon Wireless increased the price of its grandfathered unlimited data plan by $20 a month. Other major US wireless carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint have likewise increased the prices of their respective unlimited data plans in the last few months.

Echoing what its fellow wireless carriers have stated, AT&T has said that the planned increase in the price of its grandfathered unlimited data plans was a means by which it could keep up with the ever rising cost of delivering more data access to its subscribers while at the same time, making sure that the quality of service remains uncompromised.

Furthermore, unlimited data plans appear to be on the way out, or at least the way in which they are being offered by today’s wireless carriers. Various network providers now offer their subscribers buckets of data allowances instead of straight out unlimited data options. Other wireless carriers offer their customers the choice of subscribing under plans that only offer a specific allotment of data at higher speeds, and then reduce (or throttle) the connection rate once customers go beyond a certain data usage limit.

To browse more AT&T offers, you can explore plans and phones from AT&T at MyRatePlan now.