At a certain point, if prices rise the business is just unsustainable and you will have the contact terminated by the company going out of business.
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AT&T Raising Prices on Legacy Plans to Encourage Customers to Upgrade to New Plans
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Quadruple our population density and our plans would be cheaper too. Takes a few generations though and you might find the rise in costs in other areas would outweigh cheaper cell service.
I have the unlimited talk text and 8 gb a month prepaid AT&T plan. $300 a year or $25 a month. Gotta pay in advance. After 8 gb the speeds are drastically reduced, but I am mostly on wi-fi anyway. Hotspot included and unused data rolls over to the next month up to 16 gb max. T-Mo is bad where I live in So Cal.
Been to Europe lately, where oligopoly is routinely broken up? I have. You're flat wrong. We are being massively overcharged and our government is actively ignoring one of its primary duties to not allow the extraction of monopoly rents, a concept well understood for hundreds of years, and that anyone paying even vague attention in Econ 101 understands.
Economic rent - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Ever been to Europe lately where LTE, forget 5G, is basically only available in the cities and not ubiquitous as it is in a landmass much larger than the entirety of Europe?
And sorry, but $35 per line is very competitive to Europe.
Yup! My colleagues in the UK are constantly complaining about the slow, spotty service and having to resort to 3G because it's the only connection available.
I don’t think people understand how expensive it is to provide cellular service. There are rents and land payments for towers and sites, switching centers to maintain, internet service distribution to maintain, significant hardware costs annually, electricity cost, interconnection fees, roaming agreements, employee costs, software, etc. The list goes on. When prices for commodities goes up, everything goes up. I don’t think some of you appreciate the effort and expense it takes to maintain a network that is nearly 100% reliable spanning a country the size of the US. Providing Jonny Cheapskate service at 2004 rates is not sustainable for any prime carriers. The only reason the MVNOs have cheaper rates is because they pay metered rates to the AT&Ts and Verizon’s. They typically lock you into usage brackets so they can predict the metered rates and their customers are deprioritized at peak times for data traffic. So you do get a lesser service on a MVNO technically, but because our infrastructure is so well done you don’t notice. The whole MVNO concept is for the larger carriers to capture customers that normally would be unwilling/unable to pay unmetered rates and make additional revenue from providing backend services to them. If you didn’t have customers paying AT&T, Verizon, & T-Mobile retail rates…..there would be no Tings, Xfinity Mobile, or others because it would be unsustainable. There is a lot to telecommunications that most people will never see or understand, but one thing it’s not is cheap to operate. We won’t even go into telecom taxes and local, state, & county fees. That is a whole other nightmare.
Explain to me this: Why do these grandfathered plans still exist? Is it a law/regulation? I don't get why they don't just get rid of those super old plans and move them to the current ones.
Also: Why is everyone always so upset when something like this happens? There are no guarantees and promises in the wireless industry. If you have a plan you like right now, that's great, but nobody is promising that you get to keep that plan with that price forever.
Also: Why is everyone always so upset when something like this happens? There are no guarantees and promises in the wireless industry. If you have a plan you like right now, that's great, but nobody is promising that you get to keep that plan with that price forever.
Such a breath of fresh air backed by facts. I'm no pro-corporate. I'm just anti-BS-complaining.
Just adjust what you do. Offline load more stuff when you're at home.
We've been with AT&T for years. We have the military plan 2 lines and the basics. If we have a problem we call and its fixed and if they owe us its credited immediately. Buy our phones at Apple store or refurbished section. Now that we're looking at retirement "Consumer Cellular" has been mentioned by friends and they run off of AT&T's network.
AT&T called about 6 to 8 months ago wanting us to switch to another plan I listened to the rep and said no thank you because they wanted 25.00 + more a month. Not worth it to us.
AT&T called about 6 to 8 months ago wanting us to switch to another plan I listened to the rep and said no thank you because they wanted 25.00 + more a month. Not worth it to us.
What state are you in? I can’t help you switch back and give you a $250 credit per line.
Son of a… just googled and saw the mlb.tv offer was a T-Mobile tuesdays promo. So mad I missed that. agree with you though much happier with T-Mobile since switching from ATT
For me it is. I am on a T-Mobile legacy plan. 80 a month for two lines with unlimited everything. Data slows down after 10 GB per line, but it has never been an issue for me. The real difference for me is the legacy plan allows for more hotspot use. T-Mobile for me has been great. I’ve been on the same plan for about fifteen years and they have never raised the price or bothered me to do so. The home internet also allowed me to ditch Comcast Really the worst company in the world.
Italy. But hey, the 16€ price for home wifi comes from iliad, a French company. Are you sure the same offer does not exist in France?
I held onto it for years but doesn't seem to be worth it anymore. They don't allow 5G for one I believe. Could be wrong about that. Other issues as well with older plan.
I have a legacy family plan and its cheaper than any current plan they offer. I dont need unlimited data. AT&T will call with offers on occasion and they quickly discover that the legacy plan im on is the cheaper option. Even at a $12 increase it will still be cheaper than the unlimited plans they offer.
Yeah used to have the sprint’s “unlimited” plan before someone kidnapped Mr. Webster and they started redefining words so unlimited doesn’t mean unlimited anymore.
Now that we are T-Mobile the “unlimited” is still limited.
They are warning me that if I keep it up they will require that I switch to a higher unlimited data plan.
This nonsense has to stop.
Now that we are T-Mobile the “unlimited” is still limited.
They are warning me that if I keep it up they will require that I switch to a higher unlimited data plan.
This nonsense has to stop.
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Because service providers generally don't like to disrupt things too much for customers who have a lot of choices.
Think about it; you're a customer for several years now, happily paying your bill every month and not even thinking about your cellular service. It works, the bill is within your budget, so why worry about it?
Suddenly you get a notice from AT&T saying that the plan you're on is being discontinued and you have to choose a new plan, or are being moved to a new plan with a different level of service and a higher cost.
NOW you're suddenly thinking about your cellular service. "Hmm, AT&T is changing my plan. I wonder what the other companies offer?"
So there's basically two choices, leave plans grandfathered, or change people's plans against their will and lose customers. This price increase is only happening because inflation has been so bad in the past year and their costs have gone up a lot. It's a desperate price increase. They would really rather not have to do it at all, and it WILL cost them customers. I already know at least one person who's moving to T-Mobile. I'm sure there are many more.
I suspect this is one of the reasons why Netflix is losing so many customers lately. Every price increase reminds people "Do I really need Netflix?" and it's even worse because you can survive without Netflix; most people can't survive without their phone.
Imagine an all you can eat buffet going for everything for 20 bucks but when they see you eating like a pig they show you a 40 $ price tag.
Sorry but my business is unsustainable if you eat like that....... Would you be okay with it? You entered because it was a 20$ all you can eat no a 20$ all the owner can afford buffet.
It's just bad business practice offering something that does not make sense (economically), and data is getting cheaper not more expensive. (again i pay 5.99 for 70 GB in Italy, where everything is super expensive, I cannot see people paying 60$ a month!)
So they make the low offer first to attract you, then they upcharge when you are in.
Spot on. Operators will spend over $600 billion globally on 4G and 5G infrastructure (e.g., base stations) through 2025, according to GSMA Intelligence’s The Mobile Economy 2022 report. They'll spend even more on spectrum. For example, U.S. operators alone spent $112 billion on mid-band licenses in 2021. That's just one auction. There were additional 5G auctions in the U.S. in preceding years, and there are more to come this year and the next.
They're not "getting away" with anything. If you are still under contract, they can't change the rates or you can break the contract without penalty. But once you go month-to-month at the end of your contract, they're under no obligation other than public opinion to keep the rate they charge where it is, or removing the service completely.
ATT sucks, but how else would you have *any* industry work?