T-Mobile’s Jump has gotten other major carriers thinking about their plans. AT&T responded by starting their ‘Next’ program that would allow their customers to make monthly payments on phones. In order for you to upgrade with AT&T, you would need to trade in their device, pay an upfront fee, and then continue to make monthly payments, which would be $32.50. Verizon also introduced their own ‘Edge’ plan.
Out of all the big three, AT&T came out to be the most expensive at $630. While Verizon costs customers $565, and T-Mobile runs $518.
AT&T now has changed up their pricing for their Next plan. Instead of customers paying $32.50, AT&T is now going to charge $27 per month. This is a great deal improvement over the previous pricing, however, is still the most very expensive.
In a new edited chart by MacRumors, the plan is still more expensive than T-Mobile’s $518, however, it is a dollar cheaper than Verizon’s Edge plan. Take a look at the table below.
Through the program, customers end up double paying for their devices through both the new monthly handset payments and the portion of the monthly service charge that has traditionally been collected by the carrier to recoup its upfront handset subsidies. Assuming that $20 of AT&T’s monthly service fees go toward recouping the carrier’s handset subsidy, a customer looking to upgrade after 12 months would have paid $324 in device payments on a 16 GB iPhone 5 and $240 from monthly service fees, yielding total payments of $564 for the $650 device, although they also have to turn in the device to AT&T.
If you look, AT&T ‘s Next plan is still unfair and quite expensive. AT&T is always looking milk out every penny out of their customers and with this new tactic, they are making things worse for their customers.
