Families looking to meticulously manage their monthly budgets have a major, highly impactful new development to consider today. AT&T officially retired the legacy 'GoPhone' branding, transitioning its prepaid arm simply to 'AT&T Prepaid' while simultaneously increasing data allowances. AT&T positioned the rebrand online, the prepaid market has become fiercely competitive, and AT&T is realizing that budget-conscious consumers are no longer willing to accept sub-par network speeds or tiny data buckets.
The competitive gap in actual, real-world network performance has narrowed to an almost indistinguishable margin in most urban and suburban areas. Independent testing firms routinely show that the difference between the 'best' network and the 'worst' network is often just a few megabits per second. Because the engineering battle is largely a stalemate, the war has shifted entirely to aggressive, confusing marketing bundles.
The concept of shared data was initially pitched years ago as a way to simplify family billing, but it quickly became a source of intense household anxiety. Now, as the industry pivots aggressively back toward 'unlimited' tiers in 2017, that anxiety hasn't disappeared; it has merely changed shape. Instead of worrying about massive overage fees at the end of the month, parents are now forced to navigate the complexities of data deprioritization and strict video resolution throttling.
Managing a household budget is all about sweating the small details. If you don't know exactly what hardware and service compatibility your family actually needs, the carrier will happily let you pay a massive premium for the wrong setup. A plan that looks perfectly tailored for a single power user can become a financial nightmare when multiplied across four different smartphones, a tablet, and a connected smartwatch.
Stepping back to analyze the broader market context, 2017 is proving to be the year of the 'Unlimited' war. After years of trying to force consumers into strict data buckets, the major carriers have completely capitulated, largely driven by T-Mobile's relentless marketing pressure. However, this new era of unlimited data is littered with heavy restrictions, including hotspot caps and optimized video streams, proving that true unlimited no longer exists.
Another massive factor at play this year is the looming shadow of the 5G transition. While actual 5G deployment is still years away from widespread consumer adoption, carriers are aggressively hoarding capital and spectrum. They need billions of dollars for the next-generation hardware rollout, and the easiest place to find that capital is by slightly tweaking the profit margins on current LTE plans under the guise of network upgrades.
So, what does this mean for your bottom line? I highly recommend logging into your online account this weekend and reviewing your actual, empirical data usage over the past three to six months. If your family consistently uses less than 15GB combined, do not upgrade to these new unlimited tiers.
Take a deep breath and review your options carefully. A little bit of proactive homework on your family's current usage habits can easily save your household hundreds of dollars over the course of the year.