From the AT&T press release:
AT&T is continuing to simplify pricing with new plans that eliminate data overage charges for our wireless customers.
The new Mobile Share Advantage plans are available Aug. 21. Consumers and businesses alike can gain a wireless experience, without overage charges. Instead of overage charges, after customers use all of their high-speed data amounts, all data usage will be reduced to a maximum of 128 kbps for the rest of their bill cycle.
In effect, once you hit your data cap, your data speed will slow to a relative crawl.
From the fine print:
No charge for overage. After all your high-speed data allotments are used, all data usage is slowed to a max of 128 Kbps (2G speed) for the rest of the bill cycle. You will have basic data use for viewing a web page or checking email. Audio and video streaming, picture and video messaging, select apps and other services, as well as other usage, including sponsored data, will be impacted and may not be fully functional.
I’m assuming you can pay to add more high-speed data for the month, so this seems like a positive development.
This is just a rebranding of their “unlimited” data that got them in trouble some years back.
Isn’t that T-Mobile’s new plan?
This is not so positive if you are often near Wi-Fi and weren’t using more than 15 GB of data, where the prices do begin to veer lower. I’ll now pay $5 more per month (per phone charge is now $20 instead of $15) for half the data in the same tier.
They do not force you to switch. You can keep your current plan. I still have the same plan I’ve had for 8+ years.
Did you even read this? The Mobile Share Advantage plans referenced here are not advertised or sold as unlimited data plans. You select an amount of data you would like to share and then add the number of phones you need. The cost of the base plan gives you unlimited talk and text plus the number of GB you select. You then add phones for $20 each (off-contract) or $40 each (on-contract).
And they never “got in trouble” for their unlimited plan. They got some bad press and the FCC asked them for information, which led to them expanding the max before throttling from 5GB monthly to 23GB monthly.
As an example, my family averages 8GB of monthly data, maxing at 12GB in the past 18 months. If we switch away from our unlimited plans to a 16GB plan under this, we will save $80 per month with off-contract phones.