AT&T Brings 4G LTE, New Plans to GoPhone Prepaid Service
Till now, AT&T GoPhone customers have been stuck with slow 3G speeds and phones (that’s so 2010) but today, the carrier announced that it’s adding 4G support and new plans to its prepaid service starting next week.
The plans will kick into effect on June 21, and start at $25 a month for 250 minutes of nationwide calling and unlimited messaging, with an option to add 50 megabytes of data for $5 a month. For $40 a month, you get 500 minutes of voice calls, unlimited messaging and 200MB of data (an additional 100MB of data is available for $5 a month).
The $50 monthly plan offers unlimited everything, with the caveat that unlimited data be consumed over Wi-Fi only. Finally, the $60 plan gets you unlimited calls, text and 2GB of data, with the option of adding another 50MB of data for $5 a month.
The new plans bring some savings compared to the current offerings, but also eliminate some flexibility for adding more data. For example, compared to the current $65 monthly plan, the new $60 deal offers double the data at a lower price. But previously, customers could select additional buckets of data for either $5 for 50MB, $15 for 200MB and $25 for 1GB. Now, they’ll only be able to choose from the options noted above.
AT&T spokesperson Mari Melguizo said the company did this based on customer feedback and to help simplify it offerings. “We now have clear choices for customers with more, moderate or less data needs. Customers can add incremental data to their plan if they need to, or they can step up to the next plan,” she said.
Whether customers will take to the changes remains to be seen, but the good news is added support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, which is now live in 278 markets. New and current GoPhone subscribers can bring their own 4G smartphone to use with the service, or they can pick up the new 4G-enabled Samsung Galaxy Express.
The Android Jelly Bean device has a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen and a five-megapixel rear camera and front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera. It’s powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and has 8GB of internal storage with a microSD expansion slot.
The Galaxy Express will also be available on June 21 for $250.
