PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

AT&T to Legacy Unlimited Customers: $5 More, Please

If you're grandfathered into an old AT&T plan with unlimited data, you'll have to fork over $5 more per month.

 & Tom Brant Managing Editor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

Our Expert
LOOK INSIDE PC LABS HOW WE TEST
65 EXPERTS
43 YEARS
41,500+ REVIEWS

After going seven years without a price increase, AT&T subscribers who are grandfathered into AT&T's unlimited data plan had to fork over an additional $5 per month starting last February. Now they'll have to do it again.

AT&T is raising the price of its unlimited data plans, which are no longer available to new customers, by $5 per month starting in March, according to DSL Reports.

The change increases monthly data rates to $40. Coming one year after the first price hike, it signals that AT&T intends to use regular price hikes to encourage legacy customers to switch to one of its current Mobile Share Advantage plans with data caps. There's also an unlimited plan introduced last year, but it's only for customers who also subscribe to DirecTV.

"Our Mobile Share Advantage plans and our AT&T Unlimited Plan provide several benefits that our legacy unlimited plan doesn't," AT&T told PCMag. "If you have a legacy unlimited data plan, you can keep it; however, beginning in March 2017, it will increase by $5 per month."

Unlimited, meanwhile, is not truly unlimited. Like many of its rivals, AT&T throttles users if they use more than 22GB of data in a billing cycle. That's a big enough cap that all but the most data-hungry customers won't notice it, but then again, those data fiends are precisely the type of customers who would want an unlimited plan.

AT&T's push to curb high data use comes as Verizon is doing the same thing. Verizon last week announced that people who average 200GB a month will be pushed off its unlimited tier. Verizon is offering those subscribers an ultimatum: move to a limited plan by Feb. 16, or get disconnected and switch to a different provider.

About Our Expert

Tom Brant

Tom Brant

Managing Editor

I’m a managing editor at PCMag.com focused on PC hardware. Reading this during the day? Then you've caught me testing gear and editing reviews of Wi-Fi routers, printers, laptops, and tons of other personal tech. (Reading this at night? Then I’m probably dreaming about all those cool products.) I’ve covered the consumer tech world as an editor, reporter, and analyst since 2015.

I've covered most major consumer tech events, including CES, Computex, Google I/O, and IFA. I've also appeared on CBS News, in USA Today, and at many other outlets to offer analysis on breaking technology news.

Before I joined the tech-journalism ranks, I wrote on topics as diverse as Borneo's rainforests, Middle Eastern airlines, and Big Data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, I also have a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University.

The Technology I Use

While most people buy a phone or laptop and stick with it for years, I’m lucky enough to use devices based on Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows daily as part of my job. As a result, I cycle through lots of tech in addition to my IT-issue work laptop. (Yes, that's a ThinkPad.) Personally, I’ve also owned a lot of tech products both cutting-edge and cringeworthy, from the Nintendo GameCube and the original MacBook to the Palm m105 and the CueCat.

Read full bio