AT&T has started running a new promotion to help attract prepaid wireless customers to its network. The carrier is giving away one month of free service to new subscribers. Additionally a major change has been made to how AT&T handles data on its $65 ($60 with auto pay) phone plan. Data on the plan will now come with 4G LTE data at full speeds. Previously data speeds were limited to a maximum of 3 Mbps.
AT&T Prepaid One Month Free Promo Details
AT&T Prepaid is giving new customers one free month of service when they purchase a device or SIM Kit online and activate a new line of service on a plan priced $35/month or higher. To get the free month, customers must also activate auto pay billing within 27 days of activation. If all the requirements are met, customers will get an account credit for their second month that is equal to the cost of the plan that they subscribed to at signup.
This offer is available online only and will be available until 4/9/18.
AT&T's Updated Prepaid Phone Plans
All plans shown below include unlimited talk and text and are eligible for the free month of service promotion.
- $35 ($30 with auto pay) - 1GB data with the option to stream video in HD
- $45 ($40 with auto pay) - 6GB data with the option to stream video in HD. Phone can be used in Canada and Mexico at no extra charge.
- $65 ($60 with auto pay) - unlimited full speed LTE data with video streaming limited to 480p or about 1.5 Mbps. No mobile hotspot. Phone can be used in Canada and Mexico at no extra charge. Data speeds may be temporarily slowed down any time the network becomes busy. Previously the plan had data speeds limited to a maximum of 3 Mbps and if more than 22GB of data got used in a month speeds slowed down even further during times of network congestion.
- $85 ($75 with auto pay) - unlimited full speed LTE data and unlimited hotspot. First 6GB of hotspot at 4G LTE data speeds before throttling to 128 Kbps. HD video streaming. Phone can be used in Canada and Mexico at no extra charge.
Taxes and fees are not included in the prices shown and they do cost extra.
AT&T offers 3 other prepaid phone plans but they are not eligible for the free month of service promotion. Those other plans are as follows:
- $30/month ($25 with auto pay) unlimited talk and text with no data. Data is available on an as needed basis priced at $5 for 250 MB.
- $2/day - includes unlimited talk and text, but only need to pay on days that you use the phone.
- Pay Go - 25¢ per minute for all nationwide calls.
Editor's Take
AT&T may have updated its $65 phone plan to undercut and better take on Verizon. Verizon's $75/month prepaid plan also includes unlimited data with no speed restrictions except for a data prioritization policy. Both company's phone plans now offer unlimited LTE data that only gets slowed down during times of heavy network congestion. This is in contrast to most other unlimited plan providers on the market who only begin to temporarily slow down data speeds after a certain amount of high speed data has been consumed in a month. In either case, these practices are referred to as data prioritization policies and they are in place to help the carriers to manage the flow of traffic on their networks. Without such policies, subscribers who are constantly consuming large amounts of data would further slow the network and degrade the overall user experience for other subscribers.
Verizon's $75 unlimited plan, unlike AT&T's $65 plan, does offer mobile hotspot, however it is limited to speeds of 600 Kbps.
AT&T has not said how much it will slow its customer's data speeds during times of heavy network traffic. This might vary based on location and by the amount of congestion. Depending on what market you are in, you may never notice that your data is being slowed without doing a speed test. In other markets it may be more apparent. AT&T's network is capable of delivering speeds of over 100 Mbps, although most customers can expect to experience speeds much slower than that.
|| See also: Table of the latest carrier and MVNO promotions