PhoneNews.com has been able to confirm a new set of GoPhone Pick Your Plan Offerings currently being trialed in the Northeast and Texas which are designed with the best of intentions to ease confusion and make prepaid a viable option, but end up being more expensive and less friendly to the prepaid consumer as a whole.
Starting with the reduction in plans from five to four, AT&T has wisely decided to keep the $29.99 plan with a $250 account limit with any overages being deducted, and instead increases the next tier by $14 to $44.99 for an additional 250 minutes and 5000 night/weekend minutes.
The first major blow to the service starts with the $44.99 and higher tiers requiring a $25 activation fee with the second blow being the account limit being cut in half to $125Â with any overages automatically deducted, causing the customer to lose tens, if not hundreds of dollars in purchased airtime if the more expensive plans are selected.
The next two plan tiers are set at $64.99 for 900 minutes and $84.99 for 1350 minutes and add 450 minutes only to each tier for an additional $20 with the same $125 account limit. Â The only advantage in the above tiers is unlimited AT&T network calling and unlimited night/weekend minutes being included.
The reduced account limit for the higher tiers is likely a result of AT&T wanting to clamp down on people cashing out large balances when used for data only or moving large balances to postpaid plans.
The new Pick Your Plan service also does away with data options of any kind and relies solely on 1¢/kb data access which makes it quite expensive to use even occasionally, and makes the web2go plans from T-Mobile look positively generous in comparison on FlexPay.
AT&T would be better served bringing back data access and taking a page out of the UK carrier playbook with nominal tiers for large blocks of prepaid data access and hard caps instead of offering unlimited data and pulling the offering hiding behind cloudy excuses such as abuse.
If these new GoPhone Pick Your Plan options are indications of the new offerings AT&T has in store for GoPhone PYP customers on a wider scale, this only reaffirms the second class status that AT&T regards for prepaid users.
The elimination of unlimited data will also drive savvy and normal customers even further away to other alternatives such as Sprint, T-Mobile, or even Verizon with Month-to-Month data access as well as better alternatives for voice in T-Mobile Prepaid, Boost, Virgin Mobile, and Verizon.
Prepaid customers are definitely not valued and from the look of these plans they are also not believed to be wise consumers.
Is it me or is AT&T becoming the big oil of wireless providers. They are taking away any opportunity for anyone to use their service at a fair price without being sucked into a 2 year contract. Even Verizon lets you set up service with an existing Verizon phone obtained through ebay or a friend for example, or by purchasing a phone at full price without any contract.
[…] phonenews.com was able to confirm the trial plans with AT&T. Categories Filed Under: AT&T, News, Speculation, iPhone, mobile market Comments [0] digg_window = “new”; digg_skin = “compact”; digg_bgcolor = ‘#f5f5f5′; digg_url = “http://www.macblogz.com/2008/12/22/atts-no-contract-iphone-possible-prepaid-plan-details/”; digg_title = “AT&T’s No Contract iPhone, Possible Prepaid Plan Details”; digg_bodytext = “Back in July when Apple and AT&T released the iPhone 3G, they also promised everyone a “no-contract” – “no-strings-attached” iPhone. While the no-contract iPhone hasn’t been released yet, some confirmed “go phone” plans have been unveiled. The plans are aimed at being less confusing to customers. However, they end up being more complex, with more overages […]”; Previous Post ADVERTISEMENT […]
[…] because the nation’s No. 1 carrier is experimenting with some new pricing schemes. Phone News has the scoop. As you’ll see in the table below, not a whole ton has changed on the surface, […]
[…] phonenews.com was able to confirm the trial plans with AT&T. […]
ATT is NOT #1 anymore
Verizon wireless has aquired alltel which gives verison more then 80 milllion
Sorry att hahahahaha
The problem with Verizon is they don’t use sim cards – thats a scam and it makes it hard to update phones without being with them on contract – would not use Verizon
Joe, I don’t see how using SIM cards makes it hard to “update” phones.
If you mean a software update, that has no difference. Even things like the roaming files are updated automatically on CDMA providers.
You can swap phones online, and now Verizon even lets you activate the new phone just by calling *228 (no call to customer service either). You don’t even need to have the old phone with you. That makes it easier than a SIM card as far as I can tell.
I used the new update option 3 through *228 in October to swap phones and was successful. I had one minor glitch as the voice portion set up correctly however I was unable to use anything involving data until I called back to *228 and used option 1 though I have been told by a friend who workes for Verizon that this has been fixed. Still even with having to make 2 calls I was able to swap without no interaction with customer service.