What should I expect my phone bill to be when my contract expires?

[questionmark32]

From what I understand, if you're on a 2-year contract (which I currently am), you pay a subsidy each month since you got the phone at a discounted price. My contract is up in November and I bought an iPhone 6 Plus at full price since I don't want to be locked into another plan (like Next or a 2-year plan) I want to decide whether I should move on to T-Mobile or Verizon.

But since I have my own phone, shouldn't my bills be cheaper? How do I get AT&T to decrease my bill payments in December when I'll be out of my contract?

 

[JeremyE]

Your bill won't change unless you're on one of the plans like Next or Edge. The only subsidized thing you have is your phone, which was bought at a subsidized price because you agreed to a two year contract. I have a Sprint line not on contract anymore and it's the same price I paid for the last 2 years, same with a Verizon line.

 

[hipnetic]

I'm guessing you're on an older plan and not on one of the new mobile share plans. If so, there is no discounted price you'll be able to get with your current plan. Your phone subsidy is baked into the plan. That leaves you two options:
1) You can maximize the value of it by purchasing another 2-year commitment subsidized phone as soon as you're able. Since you apparently couldn't wait that long and already purchased a phone at full price, you could use that to then resell the phone you'd buy in November as brand new, thereby reducing your overall TCO (total cost of ownership) in a roundabout manner.
2) You could immediately switch to a mobile share plan. Since you bought your older phone nearly 2 years ago, they will let you switch and will immediately forgive the remainder of your 2-year commitment, giving you the "discounted" mobile share plan price now. This could save you some money compared to your current plan. If you were going to go this route, though, you should have done it *BEFORE* you bought that new iPhone 6 that you couldn't live without, since you would have then been able to buy that new phone through Next and spread the payments out over 20 months at 0% interest.

Now, if I'm wrong and you're somehow on one of the newer mobile share plans already, and yet you have a nearly 2-year old phone that you're still somehow locked into a 2-year commitment on, then somebody screwed up somewhere. When you switched to the mobile share plan at some point over the last year or so, they should have forgiven the remainder of your current 2-year commitment. And, again, that would mean that you should have bought that new iPhone 6 via a Next 20-month 0% interest financing plan.

I'm going to hazard a guess that you're in the first situation I described above. So, to reiterate my point there...there's no way to keep the phones you already have *AND* the old plan you already have *AND* get any sort of added discount. The subsidized phone pricing is effectively paid back to AT&T by way of a slightly higher monthly plan price, and they don't reduce that plan price when your 2-year commitment is done. To maximize your value, what you ought to do is buy another subsidized phone as soon as you're able.