AT&T’s New $35 1 GB GoPhone Plan Dissappoints

AT&T has launched a new GoPhone plan.  The plan is priced at $35/month and it includes unlimited talk, text and data with the first 1GB at 4G LTE speeds before throttling to a maximum speed of 128 kbps.  Unlimited international texting to over 100 countries is also included.  Those that enable autopay billing on their accounts can get a $5/month discount on the plan, making the final price $30/month before taxes and fees.

The rest of AT&T's Monthly GoPhone plan lineup is as follows:
All plans include unlimited talk and text, and international text messaging.  All plans with data except the unlimited data plan include data rollover.

• $30/month, $25 with autopay billing, talk and text only no data
• $35/month, $30 with autopay billing, 1GB of high speed data
• $45/month, $40 with autopay billing, 6GB of high speed data plus talk, text and data roaming while in Mexico or Canada (An AT&T MVNO BestMVNO Top Pick!).
• $65/month, $60 with autopay billing, unlimited "4G LTE" data with speeds restricted to a maximum of 3 mbps plus talk, text and data roaming while in Mexico or Canada.

AT&T does offer a couple of other pay as you go plans, which are absurdly priced.  A 25¢ per minute plan is offered which also includes text messages at a rate of 20¢ per text and data billed at the mind blowing wallet emptying rate of 1¢ per kb or a whopping $10,000 per GB!

A $2/day plan is also offered where subscribers only pay on the day that they use their phones.  That plan includes unlimited talk and text and data gets billed at a rate of 1¢ per 5 KB or $2,000 per GB!  An optional and more reasonably priced data pass is also available which includes 100 MB of data for $1.

AT&T's newest monthly GoPhone plan also includes multi-line discounts on a maximum of up to 5 lines.  AT&T discounts line 2 by $5, line 3 by $10, line 4 by $15 and line 5 by $20. With the discounts, a couple would then pay $55/month ($5 autopay discount on each line plus additional $5 off of line 2), and a group of 3 would pay $75/month ($5 autopay discount on each line plus additional $5 off of line 2 and $10 off of line 3).  A group of 4 would pay $90, and a group of 5 would pay $100/month.

Even with the multi line discounts, the plan doesn't exactly scream deal.  AT&T MVNO Pure TalkUSA for instance offers a plan priced at $29/month that includes unlimited talk and text with 1.5 GB of data.  Multi-line discounts are also available with the plan.  AT&T MVNO H2O Wireless currently sells a plan for $27/month that includes unlimited talk, text and international text and calling with 3 GB of data.  The data  included with that plan however, is a limited time promotional offering as it normally comes with 1 GB of data.  It is expected within the next month or two that H2O Wireless will increase the amount of data that is regularly included with this plan.  Multi-line discounts are also available with H2O Wireless, although the discounts are only available to new customers.

Those interested in a GoPhone plan should take note that through 6/12/2017, AT&T is offering SIM cards for free with the purchase of a GoPhone plan.