AT&T recently announced that it will be discontinuing the $10 for 1,000 text/month plan, leaving only unlimited text plans available as an option.
If you already have the $10 text/month plan, you will be able to keep the plan until you make a change on your account. If you are currently unlimited and don’t use over 1000 texts a month, definitely switch now before that cheaper plan is gone!
This move from AT&T is likely in response to the Apple iOS 5 update that will include iMessage. iMessage will allow iPhone, iPad/iPad 2 and iPod Touch users to text one another for free, using a wi-fi network or through the data plan. Clearly, AT&T foresees their overall text usage to drop and they don’t want those customers to save the cash they would have by downgrading their text plans. My advice is even if you use over 1,000 text messages a month now, find out whether most of the friends you text are using an apple device that supports iOS 5 and weigh that into consideration on whether or not to downgrade plans now, while you still can. Again, you can always upgrade back to unlimited if that’s the best option.
This is typical AT&T trying to milk its users for all the revenue they can. The old 200 text/month plan for $5 was discontinued in January of this year. I have the $10 plan and was dismayed when I found out they discontinued the $5 plan. In checking my usage stats, I averaged only about 150 texts a month for the past year. The basic rate for a text message with no plan is 20 cents for a standard message and 30 cents for a multimedia message. Essentially, if I didn’t have a text plan, I would be paying $30 USD for my usage as opposed to the $10 I am paying now. That’s how AT&T markets their plans to make you think you’re getting a “good deal.”
However, plenty of articles have showed how ridiculous this charge is compared to what it costs the carriers to provide the service. The cost to a carrier, according to Srinivasan Keshav, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, is roughly .3 cents per text. You would have to send more than 6,000 texts in a month before the carrier would start losing any money on the deal. I don’t know anyone who texts that much, let alone half that much; and unless you are a bored teenager who is actively trying to see how many texts you can get in one month, I just don’t see it happening.
Don’t let AT&T take you to value town any more than they already are!
-Nauticaboy