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AT&T rumored to rework texting plan to counter Verizon iPhone

by Kelly Hodgkins Jan 19th 2011 at 4:30PM

AT&T may enjoy inviting Verizon iPhone owners to life in the slow lane, but the latest rumor out of GearLive suggests that AT&T may be modifying some of its pricing plans to entice customers to stick with the GSM iPhone. The leaked Best Buy screen grab suggests AT&T will drop several existing messaging plans and offer two plans that fit in with its K.I.S.S. (keep it simple silly) philosophy.

The lower priced plan will provide customers with 1000 text messages for $10 per month, while the upper tier plan will offer unlimited messaging for $20 per month ($30 on a family plan). The soon-to-be defunct plans include the Messaging 200, which included 200 messages for $5/monthly, and the Messaging 1500, which offered 1500 messages for $15 per month. These changes will reportedly take place starting January 23. Customers with these older plans will be grandfathered.

It is worthy to note that these changes may not be tied to the Verizon iPhone. Though these new messaging plans trump Verizon's current messaging plans, AT&T may be enacting them before announcing some new messaging phones or even in anticipation of the arrival of its three new Android handsets, which include the Motorola ATRIX 4G, HTC Inspire 4G and the Samsung Infuse 4G.

Plus, a small change amounting to $5 is not going to help a company retain many customers. AT&T may need to up the ante with the return of its unlimited data plan or free personal hotspot to keep unhappy iPhone customers from jumping ship.

[Via Gizmodo]

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AT&T may enjoy inviting Verizon iPhone owners to life in the slow lane, but the latest rumor out of GearLive suggests that AT&T may...
 

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36 Comments

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Apparent

Give us 10 free texts a month and I'll have a good reason to stay with AT&T. There's not need for an extra $6 for 200 texts, most of us only text about twice a month.

January 19 2011 at 11:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
vic

this is ridiculous.
AT&T should stop messing with the text plan cuz Whatsapp kind-of-app is simply taking over.
Who's sending ordinary text now anyway?

January 19 2011 at 10:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gregg4g

I'm confused as to exactly how AT&T's $20 unlimited messaging plan trumps Verizon's $20 unlimited messaging plan when they're exactly the same price.

January 19 2011 at 8:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to gregg4g's comment
Kelly Hodgkins

Verizon's add-on messaging plans include a $5/250 plan, a $10/500 plan and a $20/5000 plan which is not as good as AT&T's $10/1000 and $20/unlimited. There is no unlimited text messaging add-on for Verizon.

If you want unlimited messaging on VZW, then you have to sign up with the Talk and Text plan which bundles unlimited texts with the calling plan. This incidentally is $20 ($30 on family plans) more than the Talk plan which offers calling minutes only. So yes indirectly, unlimited texting is $20 on VZW.

For the article, I compared the texting add-ons noted above. I did not compare a bundled plan like Talk & Text because the leaked information focused only on the text messaging plans, not calling plans or bundled calling/text plans.

January 19 2011 at 11:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hank

Texting is the biggest ripoff in the cell business.

January 19 2011 at 7:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Hank's comment
Ols

What?? At $0.20 per text it only amounts to $1,310.72 per MB (well, that is if you send a full 160 characters every time). Sounds like a bargain to me. :-)

January 20 2011 at 11:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron Anderson

Those are the same prices they have now. What's the difference? they're just dropping the 1500 message plan... the one I have..

January 19 2011 at 7:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Aaron Anderson's comment
Kelly Hodgkins

Looks like AT&T may be dropping the $15/1500 and the $5/200 messaging plans. The carrier will keep the unlimited messaging plan for $20 and add a new $10/1000 plan. This is still just a rumor, though, and we will have to wait a few more days to see if it pans out.

January 19 2011 at 11:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Peter

That's easy, bring back the unlimited data plan. Texting is data make it inclusive with unlimited data.

January 19 2011 at 6:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

For people who have blocked texting on their phones, if someone does text you, do they get a message that you are not receiving texts, so that they don't think that you are just not responding?

January 19 2011 at 6:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Chris's comment
Le Big Mac

No, they don't. But people figure it out when you never respond.

January 19 2011 at 7:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alex

Unlimited texting for $5 a month and AT&T will have a chance. I don't expect Verizon to offer the rumored Unlimited Data for iPhone users except for maybe the first wave.

January 19 2011 at 6:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hmcnally

People who don't care about texting clearly don't have teenage children. That said, charging for it is an abomination: if AT&T makes unlimited texting free (they should, since is costs nearly nothing to them infrastructure-wise), they'd really make a splash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/technology/personaltech/23pogue.html

http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages

January 19 2011 at 6:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
timo

Fighting Verizon on price, network and coverage will never work. If ATT wants to drive messaging, it had better partner with a full-feature client app that is platform agnostic, and that offers some some real eye-candy, like MeetMe(TM) and Point-and-Chat(TM).
This sounds like a job for Social Messaging(TM).
Who are they going to call?
PoKos!

January 19 2011 at 5:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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