Attention AT&T Users: Get Ready to Pay Another $5 Rate Hike on Grandfathered Unlimited Data Plans

AT&T, cellular phone service provider, is augmenting the price of its grandfathered unlimited data plans by $5 per month from March 2017. This is the second such increase in the past 12 months. This price hike will affect the longtime mobile users who are availing the unlimited data plans for years after the company restricted selling them to new subscribers.

Know the AT&T's Statement on the New Pricing:

“Our Mobile Share Advantage plans and our AT&T Unlimited Plan provide several benefits that our legacy unlimited plan doesn't. If you have a legacy unlimited data plan, you can keep it; however, beginning in March 2017, it will increase by $5 per month”.

Further details of the unlimited data rate per month:

The unlimited data rate had been $30 per month for seven years, until AT&T upturned it to $35 in February 2016. Now, the price will come up to $40. This amount is for data only, including voice and texting, and it will be around $90 a month for the smartphone plans.

The company no longer provides separate unlimited data plans to its customers, but several people still hold to its unlimited data plans that were purchased before AT&T discontinued them in 2010. Those plans allow them to use unlimited data, but regulating does occur with excessive data usage.

Over last several years, AT&T has used data caps, and price hikes to encourage its grandfathered unlimited customers to switch to new plans. In the year 2014, the FTC propelled a federal court complaint against AT&T for its throttling practices leading AT&T to measure them back. In the beginning of 2016, AT&T reintroduced $100 unlimited data plans for its AT&T DirecTV or AT&T U-Verse plan subscribers.

AT&T, cellular phone service provider, encouraged customers to move to its new plans, having data limits, saying the newer packages "provide several benefits that our legacy unlimited plan doesn’t." For example, with its newer plans, users can share the Internet services with another device through mobile hotspot connections. AT&T had stopped selling unlimited smartphone data to new customers and for people who are switching plans. However, last year, they introduced a new unlimited plan, which is available to people who also subscribe to U-verse TV or DirecTV.

While Verizon Wireless encourages users to stop availing unlimited data plans if they use more than 200GB a month, AT&T has used several other tactics to limit the usefulness of the grandfathered plans. In 2011, AT&T started withdrawing unlimited data plans from customers who escape iPhones to use illegal tethering services. This cellular phone service provider also used to control unlimited data customers for the rest of the month when they used more than 3GB or 5GB, depending on what device they had. AT&T has made the throttling less disciplinary, now applying it after users use at least 22GB in a month, and even then only when customers connect to a congested cell tower. The Government agencies try to penalize AT&T for unlimited data throttling have so far come up empty.