As promised, AT&T has officially announced that new and old customers will be able to start buying shared data plans in late August. But these aren't the shared data plans we've dreamed of, where we can finally save some money by lumping our tablet and smartphone bills together. AT&T seems to think that the convenience alone is worth quite a bit of money.
Carriers have been talking about shared data plans for well over a year now, and Verizon beat its competitors to the punch in June. But when we ran the numbers on the new Verizon plans, we found there were little, if any, savings to be had. This was especially the case for solo smartphone-and-iPad owners. AT&T's plans work the same way as Verizon's, with a flat fee for unlimited minutes and texts and a set amount of data, then a sizable access charge for each device on the plan. However, AT&T manages to charge significantly more money with shared data than with separate plans in at least one common scenario.
As it is, a typical solo tablet-and-smartphone user's bill breaks down like this: $40 per month for 450 minutes (at minimum), $20 for unlimited messaging, $30 for 3GB of data for the phone, and another $30 for 3GB on the tablet. That comes to $120 per month. If that user changes over to a shared data plan, they'd pay $90 per month for unlimited minutes, texts, and 6GB of data; $35 for smartphone access; and $10 for tablet access—coming to $135 per month. That's $15 more per month than they'd already be paying, and all they gain is unlimited minutes and slightly more flexibility with how they use data.
However, a user who goes for the bare-minimum data plans ($20 for 300MB on the smartphone and $15 for 250MB on the tablet) would be paying $95 per month under the old system. With shared data, they'd pay the same amount for 1GB to use between the two devices. That's the best news to come out of this announcement.
Family plans have many more variables, so it's difficult to make a ruling on whether shared data is a net positive for them. We'll do the math for one scenario. Right now, a 3-person family could pay $60 for 550 minutes, $30 for three lines of access, $60 for 6GB of data (3GB per smartphone), $15 for 250MB of tablet data, and $30 for unlimited family messaging. Their total? All of $195 per month. With shared data, the charges would be $90 for 6GB for sharing, $70 for access by two smartphones, $30 for a basic phone, and $10 per tablet, for a total of $200 per month. Again, there's an increase in charges for the same amount of data. But in this case, the basic phone gains access to the data as well.
Like Verizon's plans, the ability to tether devices is included with the shared data plans. But unlike Verizon, AT&T is preserving its old system for family plans. New customers can choose whether they buy data by the device or in a shared chunk. No matter what they chose, it doesn't look like there's much money to be saved.
Listing image by JPott
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