AT&T Matches T-Mobile’s $15 Plan

Last week, T-Mobile began offering a plan with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, and 2GB of data for only $15 per month. A few days later, AT&T responded by offering its own $15 per month plan with unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, and 2GB of data.

Plan terms

I dug around to learn about the plan’s policies. Here are my impressions at the moment:

• New subscribers need an AT&T prepaid SIM (costs $4.99).
• Mobile hotspot and tethering are permitted.
• Unused data rolls over for one month.¹
• Taxes and fees are not included in the $15 base price.
• Unlimited international texting to over 100 countries is included.
• Streaming video traffic will be throttled by default, but subscribers can turn the throttle off.
• The plan is not eligible for AT&T’s discounts for paperless billing or automatic payments.
• Data has a soft cap—once 2GB of regular data has been used, additional data can be used at significantly reduced speeds.

Limited time offer

AT&T has repeatedly described its new $15 plan as a promotion and a limited time offer. I don’t know when the plan will cease to be available.²

T-Mobile Connect vs. AT&T’s plan

AT&T’s $15 plan has a handful of substantial advantages over the $15 T-Mobile Connect plan:

• AT&T has better nationwide coverage.
• SIM cards are cheaper from AT&T ($5 vs. $10).
• Only AT&T offers data rollover.
• AT&T has a soft cap on data, while T-Mobile Connect has a hard cap.

However, it’s not clear how long AT&T’s plan will be around. People who take advantage of AT&T’s offer today won’t necessarily get the same great deal each month for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, it looks like the T-Mobile Connect plans will continue to be available to new and existing subscribers for years.

Update: The $15 plan from AT&T is no longer available.

1. Data will only rollover one month. Unused rollover data expires at the end of a billing period.
2. The screenshot came from AT&T’s prepaid ordering page on 3/30/2020.