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AT&T will perform its yearly price-hike for grandfathered unlimited plans
- AT&T will raise the price for grandfathered unlimited plans to $45 per month, starting in July.
- This is third price-hike in a row, one happening each year.
- The support page where AT&T announced the increase has been deleted.
AT&T stopped offering unlimited data plans for smartphones back in 2010 (for reference, one of the hottest Android smartphones that year was the Google Nexus One). However, if you didn’t leave AT&T you could keep that plan and be grandfathered-in to the low price of $30 per month.
However, in 2016 AT&T raised the price for grandfathered unlimited plans to $35 per month. In 2017 it did it again, raising the price to $40 per month. Now, starting in July 2018, AT&T confirmed on a support page (since deleted, but preserved via CNET) that it will once again hike the price to $45 per month.
At this rate, people who have grandfathered unlimited plans now will pay the same amount as a new unlimited customer in 2022.
Currently, the cheapest unlimited data offering AT&T has is the $65-per-month Unlimited Choice Enhanced plan. Even then, you only get the $65 price if you sign up for autopay and don’t count the additional taxes and fees.
AT&T, in its support page announcement of the price hike, said that the reason for the raise is the “record levels” of data usage nationwide.
However, “record levels” of data usage doesn’t appear to be a problem for other carriers like Sprint, which just announced a $15-per-month unlimited plan for those who port their number from another carrier to Sprint.
As of now, it does not appear that AT&T will cancel grandfathered plans.
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