On January 12, AT&T quietly introduced a new set of mobile plans called Mobile Share Flex as a replacement to the previously available Mobile Share Advantage plans. Who knows why AT&T changed these so quietly, but possibly because not much changes and they would rather you look over there at those shiny unlimited plans they have. Either way, here are the details of Mobile Share Flex, for those who might be interested.
AT&T Mobile Share Flex
The big change is the set of data tiers you have to choose from. In Mobile Share Advantage, you had at least 7 different data buckets to choose from, but now you’ve got just 4: 1GB, 5GB, 10GB, and 20GB. After that change, a lot of the rest of this situation stays the same.
You’ll pay $20 per smartphone as a sort of line access fee, followed by your data bucket cost. Additionally, AT&T is offering a $10 discount if you sign-up for autopay and paperless billing. With that $10 discount, you have the $20 smartphone charge next to the following data prices:
- 1GB – $25
- 5GB – $50
- 10GB – $75
- 20GB – $100
Mobile Share Flex plans also include Rollover Data, 2G data access after you use up your data bucket, unlimited texting from the US to over 120 countries, hotspot tethering with your data plan, and Mexico and Canada usage (on plans 10GB and over).
The Mobile Share Flex plans were first spotted by Wave7 Research.
If interested, you can sign-up for Mobile Share Flex at AT&T’s site.
// AT&T
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This should be like electricity, water, gas, etc – like Google Fi is leaning towards. I pay for what I use. No pre-guessing “buckets”.
And reasonable rates. Their 20GB plan implies data is $5/GB, but 1 GB costs $25? At least I have 5 T-Mo unlimited for $150 (got 5th line free during promo). Coverage is improving dramatically from when I switched 2 years ago.
These plans “look’ $10 cheaper but they are also giving less data? What are the added benefits over the old plans?
Carriers change plans so frequently I honestly have no idea if this is good or bad compared to what they used to be.
I have an outdated AT&T 15GB family plan (barely 1 year old) that is now similarly priced with a 12GB plan. The lower tier unlimited plan (i.e. slightly slower speeds with SD video streaming) has been coming down in recent months (around $145 for 3 phones).