AT&T has announced that it has re-opened official support and access to GoPhone prepaid service to iPhone after a three-year blockade that began with the release of the iPhone 3G.
At the launch of the original iPhone, customers were able to officially activate iPhone on GoPhone without having to institute workarounds, while the launch of the 3G and 3GS forced AT&T to officially exclude the iPhone from prepaid access due to heavier data usage and the drive to sell postpaid accounts while it still had exclusivity. That forced many to use workarounds for GoPhone access until the loopholes were closed indefinitely, the last wave of changes allowed iPhone access again starting 18 months ago.
Now, AT&T is also opening GoPhone access to 4G LTE and HSPA devices, albeit with limitations on plan selection, as as the iPhone and 4G LTE/HSPA+ devices will all require separate data plan packages on the low-end $50/$25 plans, while the higher-end $65 smartphone plan will be reconfigured to support the aforementioned devices without losing Visual Voicemail support or other features required for full HSPA/LTE access on GoPhone.
As of May 24, 2013, new GoPhone customers who activate with an iPhone or 4G/LTE device can use network data. Visual Voicemail is also available, from May 24, 2013, or later, for customers who activate on a GoPhone monthly plan designed for smartphones.
Visual Voicemail is supported on $65, $50, and $25 monthly plans (with compatible devices). Visual Voicemail supports Windows 7.5 or higher, Apple 3GS or newer (with iOS 6.0 or higher), and Compatible Android Devices
While the update to GoPhone service is welcomed, it does follow AT&T’s launch of its first spinoff brand in AiO Wireless, which is a wholly-owned flat-rate prepaid service provider available in select markets in the same vein as T-Mobile’s GoSmart Mobile. Current customers that wish to take advantage of the new changes will be able to call AT&T customer service to manually reprovision their accounts and devices starting today, while over-the-air updates will be pushed out next month on the 21st to enable all devices to be fully GoPhone compatible.
So will other MVNO’s running on AT&T like Straight Talk or Net10 have LTE access switched on?
Too early to say, especially with AT&T decreasing focus on MVNOs in favor of its own offerings with Aio and now GoPhone. I really wouldn’t expect AT&T MVNOs to gain LTE access for at least 18 months from the June 21st date, because their respective backend software would need to be overhauled for LTE access and support.
It’s not as simple as changing APNs and SIM cards in the same manner that AT&T is doing for this change, because MVNOs don’t use the same backend as AT&T does to manage customer accounts and network access.
It’s also very likely that along with the backend updates needed for MVNOs, AT&T would charge a higher wholesale lease rate for LTE network access, and MVNOs really can’t risk eating away at their margins just to keep up unless they can draw enough customers to cover those costs. The money spent on the backend overhaul and the increased access rates would need to be made up somewhere, and that also usually means rate increases after gaining access without increasing data allowances.
StraightTalk effectively dropped AT&T except in select markets because it was faced with rate increases that would have done away with the $45 monthly rate for AT&T customers, so rather than risk losing the rate, they chose to drop AT&T BYOD support and devices for most markets with multiple alternatives, only keeping AT&T in markets not served by other carriers while maintaining customers that were already active.
[…] With the addition of Personal Hotspot support and FaceTime over cellular, GoPhone will become even more compelling for iPhone users compared to other prepaid brands, especially for those that would rather buy an iPhone and use it on prepaid rather than sign up for a conventional service agreement or AT&T Next, as the addition of Personal Hotspot and FaceTime over cellular means that all of the key iPhone features will be fully supported on GoPhone, which is in stark contrast to 24 months ago when the smartphone wasn’t even officially supported on GoPhone after being restricted by AT&T starting in 2009 and not being allowed on the prepaid service again until last year. […]