U.S. Mobile Price War Expands

In February 2014, AT&T announced its, “best-ever mobile pricing plans” for families and small businesses as part of an on-going response to price attacks by T-Mobile U.S. Verizon, for the most part, is taking smaller steps to protect its prepaid customer base, suggesting that the company sees the immediate danger to itself coming in the “value” segment of the mobile business.

T-Mobile U.S. countered AT&T’s move by increasing data allowances for buyers of its “Simple Choice” plans.

Beginning March 9, 2014, AT&T is launched a new pricing plan (the offer expires at the end of March 2014) that extends savings of the “Mobile Share Value” plans to customers with one and two lines.

The new lower priced 2GB Mobile Share Value plan starts at $65 a month, which is $15 off the current 2GB plan for one smartphone with no annual service contract, AT&T says.

The importance of the latest move by AT&T is that it suggests the terrain of contested market segments now is wider than at first. T-Mobile initially attacked the single device market. AT&T responded to protect its important multi-user accounts.

Now AT&T has moved to extend discounts across nearly its entire postpaid customer base.

Image via Shutterstock.

New and existing AT&T consumer and business customers will see great value in this plan, which includes domestic unlimited talk and text, as well as unlimited international messaging from the U.S. to select countries. AT&T customers with a compatible device may also sign up for 50GB of cloud storage at no additional charge.

Additionally, AT&T recently added unlimited international messaging (text, picture and video) to all Mobile Share Value plans for no additional cost.

Unlimited international messaging includes messages sent from the U.S., Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands to more than 190 countries for text messages and 120 countries for picture and video messages, another move that matches T-Mobile U.S. features, and also extends the “no incremental cost” feature from domestic to international locations.

The implications are that the price war everybody but T-Mobile U.S. wanted to avoid now is widening.