AT&T has announced that beginning on October 25th, new customers seeking to sign a new 2 year agreement with the carrier will be limited to Mobile Share plans and will no longer be allowed to choose more conventional individual service plans. While AT&T claims that its slate of Mobile Share plans are more popular than individual service plans and has cited that as the reason for the elimination of conventional service plans, the Mobile Share plan slate in its current incarnation is a poor value for many, if not the majority of individual customers that would be interested in signing up for AT&T service.
Ideally, AT&T has confirmed that current customers on individual plans will be allowed to keep their current plans indefinitely, even when upgrading, but it still does little to address new customers that may not need all of the benefits of Mobile Share plans, or want to pay the overly inflated pricing for data that AT&T is pushing as the crux of Mobile Share as seen below:
Ironically, this move may push potential customers away from AT&T proper to alternatives such as T-Mobile and even AT&T’s own Aio, which have plans that cater perfectly to individual customers without the need to pay the above prices for data access, and that’s not even taking into account the myriad of low-cost MVNOs with even better data allotments and rates.
AT&T isn’t *forcing* anything on anybody. Potential new customers can simply get service from another carrier if they don’t like the deal at AT&T.
If customers can only choose one set of plans on postpaid service without an alternative option, choosing another carrier isn’t a valid choice, especially when AT&T service is the only valid choice in much of the South/Southeast where the rest of the carriers have spotty coverage at best even after years of development. This move is nothing more than a blatant price increase being sold as an increase in convenience, which is absurd reasoning.