In just a few hours, on January 6th, 2016, AT&T will be implementing welcomed and not so welcomed changes to its GoPhone prepaid plans.
Currently AT&T offers 1.5GB and 4GB of 4G LTE data on its $45 ($40 with auto refill) and $60 ($55 with auto refill) GoPhone plans respectively. Both plans include unlimited talk and text with international messaging available to over 100 countries, as well as rollover data. The $60 plan also includes unlimited talk between the USA, Mexico and Canada as well as international roaming with full high speed data access while in Mexico or Canada.
The welcomed changes to these plans is that the $45 plan will see its 4G LTE data allotment jump to 2GB and the $60 plan will get bumped up to 5GB.
The changes make sense for the carrier given that AT&T's main competitor, Verizon, already includes 2GB of LTE data (with auto pay) with its $45 plan, although AT&T for the moment will offer 1GB more LTE data than its rival at the $60 price point.
What I find interesting here is that with the extra data, AT&T's GoPhone plan will become much more competitive with its MVNO brand Cricket Wireless at the $40 price point.
Cricket offers 2.5GB of 4G LTE data for $40 ($35 with autopay) with download speeds limited to 8Mbps, a restriction that the GoPhone plans do not have. This makes me wonder if there will be some cannibalization of Crickets $35 prepaid plan by GoPhone.
Now for the bad news. Unfortunately, those who are using the $0.10/minute prepaid talk plan are going to eventually have their plan raised to $0.25/minute. New customers will have to signup at the $0.25/minute rate.
So what do you think of AT&T's GoPhone plan changes? Will the change to AT&T's $45 GoPhone plan make some of you Cricket Wireless customers want to change your plan to get some of the extra perks provided by GoPhone?