AT&T is imposing $10 and $20 monthly price hikes on users of older unlimited wireless plans starting in August 2024, the company announced. The single-line price of these 10 “retired” plans will increase by $10 per month, while customers with multiple lines on a plan will be hit with a total monthly increase of $20.
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The $10 and $20 price increases “affect most of our older unlimited plans,” AT&T said. The list of affected plans is as follows:
AT&T Unlimited & More Premium
AT&T Unlimited Choice Enhanced
AT&T Unlimited & More
AT&T Unlimited Choice II
AT&T Unlimited Plus
AT&T Unlimited Choice
AT&T Unlimited Plan
AT&T Unlimited Plus Enhanced
AT&T Unlimited Value Plan
AT&T Unlimited Plan (with TV)
It costs them exactly $0 to keep existing plans alive. The only reason to jack up the price would be to offset the loss of potential profit from subscribers on grandfathered plans.
They tried hard for years to get me to change my plan and drop the landline number I had but never used. Having the landline technically cost me $10 dollars a month, any of their plans with comparable internet speeds and cell phone data started $50 dollars more then I was paying.
And if one factors in the fact that technological advancement in each new cellular generation makes the cost of delivering service to each grandfathered customer less expensive than the previous cellular generation, the grandfathered customer will still stay profitable unless that line of service is below ~$40/mon. (I think the value was around there.)