It’s been a weird week in the world of major cell providers.
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AT&T is the latest United States mobile carrier to announce a new “unlimited” data offer.
Keep in mind that the new unlimited plan is not exactly unlimited.
AT&T’s new unlimited plan stacks up somewhat favorably to the competition.
AT&T announced Thursday it will once again offer unlimited data. But the question remains: why? Then Big Red surprised us by launching an unlimited data plan this weekend, after years of telling us we simply didn’t need such a thing. But it won’t take effect right away – for the first month or so, four-line plans will cost $220.
AT&T’s press release didn’t mention anything regarding the possibility of any HD video or tethering restrictions, and there also isn’t any pricing info just yet for plans that are less than four lines.
AT&T’s pricing is comparable to what Verizon unveiled on Monday.
The difference between the two plans is in the hotspot – tethering, in other words. T-Mobile and Sprint employ similar video streaming features on some of their plans to minimize data used on their networks. OpenSignal also found T-Mobile and Verizon are neck and neck in terms of speed.
For Verizon, a narrowing of the gap between network coverage can’t be welcome news.
Now, Sprint has chose to join the battle with what it’s calling the best unlimited HD plan ever. Every other carrier offers 10GB of hotspot data for tethering your devices. Verizon, on the other hand, charges $80 for one line, $140 for two, and $180 for four. You can enable it by downloading the My Verizon app to your phone, logging into your account and going to the section labeled “Data Hub” where you’ll see a toggle to turn the feature on. While music tops out at 1.5Mbps, the plan does offer HD video. A Verizon customer in the Midwest, for example, can expect to get an LTE connection 89.2% of the time, whereas a Sprint customer in the Southeast can expect an LTE connection about 75% of the time. The fourth line is free, which is how we got to the $180 per month in the first paragraph.
As for AT&T? It seems it’s not keen on playing the game. Meanwhile, AT&T opened up their unlimited data plan to all of their customers.
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By leaving throttling on by default, AT&T will be able to minimize bandwidth usage on its network while giving customers the option of streaming in high definition.
