It finally happened, the telecom’s have given up their silly (and greedy) attempts to charge us through the roof for voice and text messages. All you have to do is switch over to their new family plans. It’s the new buy in bulk Costco business model.
A few weeks ago, Verizon released their Share Everything Plan, and now AT&T has answered back with the Mobile Share Plan (T-Mobile too).
Both marginalize making phone calls and sending text messages. Allowing you to send unlimited of both while switching the focus to data plans, where they have established tiers to charge you per gigabyte.
On a side note, it appears that both companies want to put the screws on individual plans. Most of which are still at $100/person while the family plan rate is $50-70/person. Even more so now that they removed the 5 device limit on the plans; now with a 10 device limit allowing even greater bulk savings.
One reason for this big family-push is possibly a strategy to prevent defections, after all it is much harder to move to another company when that also means leaving your family.
But does the new plan save any money?
For my family, no, unless we can pull in more family members.
The Breakdown
My family is on AT&T and currently has four out of six family members on one plan. The current cost for the four of us is $240.00/mo. We have one extra feature, unlimited messaging, for $30/mo. This ends up costing each of us $60/mo.
The break down:
Phone #1 (primary line)
- Family Talk, 700 minutes – $60
- Text messaging unlimited – $30
- Unlimited data – $30
- Total = $120
Phones #2, #3, #4
- Family Talk, 700 minutes – $10
- Unlimited data – $30
- Total = $40 (x3)
Under AT&T’s new plan, our total cost would be – $260 and that breaks down to $65/mo per person.
- 6GB – $90
- Smartphone – $35 x 4 = $140
- Unlimited talk/text – $30
Which means we won’t be making the change…unless we add another phone to our plan. With five phones our total cost would be $295 and that would cost $59/mo per person.
- 6GB – $90
- Smartphone – $35 x 5 = $175
- Unlimited talk/text – $30
And, in case you’re wondering if we add that sixth line the cost person would go down to $55/mo.
Maybe it’s time to wrangle together the whole family under one plan.
