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AT&T subscribers on the company's Mobile Share Advantage Plus plans will be getting a bit more data for the same price soon. Messages are being sent out to "select" qualifying subscribers notifying them of the change. Eligible customers with one of the 32 or 50GB plans will be bumped up to 40 or 65GB, respectively, at no additional charge.
One of T-Mobile's big "uncarrier" moves was to offer international roaming data to most customers for free. However, Canada and Mexico were special cases where you'd get full-speed LTE data on most plans. There wasn't any special limit on that data, which was remarkably generous—too generous, it would seem. T-Mobile is rolling that feature back and limiting LTE to 5GB per month in those countries.
Project Fi subscribers are getting a new tool to track data usage today. A post in the Fi sub-Reddit by the verified Google community manager account says data tracking will now update live, and that usage will be broken out by app. It's all live right now—just open the app and check it out.
It seems like Verizon can't go more than a few months lately without making tweaks to its plans. According to recent leaks, Big Red is preparing to increase data caps across the board (yay), but that also comes with price increases (boo). The rumored changes are expected on July 7th.
Netflix recently noted that it has been throttling data on carriers like AT&T that have overage charges, but that was just a temporary measure. The company had planned to roll its mobile data saver feature out to everyone in May, and here we are. The feature should be live for everyone right now, no update needed.
One of the loudest voices of criticism when T-Mobile launched Binge On was none other than Google, but it would appear the two companies have patched things up. T-Mobile just announced a big expansion of Binge On support, and among the new options are both YouTube and Google Play Movies.
Verizon is continuing to tweak its offerings to better compete with the upstart T-Mobile, this time offering bonus data for anyone who signs up for its larger data plans. For a limited time, you can get 2GB of extra data each month when you sign up for the XL or XXL data buckets. If you've got more than one phone on your account, they each earn the bonus 2GB.
T-Mobile has made some big changes in the last few years, but the way it manages data caps has worried some net neutrality advocates. Its last big announcement was Binge On, which exempts services like Netflix, Hulu, and others from data caps, but YouTube has now started complaining that T-Mobile throttles all video regardless of its participation in the program.
Verizon completely revamped its plans a few months ago when it ditched contracts with the aim of making the options easier to understand. Verizon's data is still more expensive than some carriers, but there's a holiday promotion that might make the cost more justifiable. If you sign up for one of Verizon's two highest data tiers, you can get 2GB of free data on each of your lines forever.
T-Mobile announced a big expansion to its Music Freedom deal today with 11 more streaming services. That means you won't use any of your data allotment to listen to these 11 services, some of which you might even have heard of. Really, most of them are pretty obscure. Good on T-Mobile for keeping Music Freedom open, I guess.
You might recall almost two years ago when AT&T started working on a sponsored data program. The idea was companies could pay AT&T to exempt certain services from your data cap. AT&T has now rolled out a different take on sponsored data as an app called Data Perks. By completing offers, you earn teeny tiny buckets of data that can be applied to your monthly plan. If you sign up now, you get a whopping 25MB of data to start. Twenty-five whole megabytes!
A new leak points to big changes about to hit T-Mobile, and these are the good kind of changes. According to TmoNews, the carrier will be adding mobile hotspot to all active plans (even prepaid) on June 12th. It will also boost some hotspot caps and stop using hard caps entirely.
Prepaid carrier Cricket Wireless has been pushing its inexpensive tax-inclusive plans and $5 auto-pay credits recently, but it just rolled out some new plans that make the deal even better. Its two cheapest plans are getting more data, and there's a new limited time deal on a larger bucket of bytes.
T-Mobile's latest ploy to steal customers away from the other national carriers is a big one. Starting in January, the carrier will no longer "confiscate" your unused data at the end of each billing cycle. Instead, that data will rollover and be kept in your "Data Stash" for one year. Sure, they'll confiscate it at that point, but that's a lot of extra data. Plus, you get 10GB of bonus data to start.
AT&T was one of the first carriers in the US to institute data caps on smartphones, and it has recently taken some heat for its treatment of grandfathered unlimited data customers. Maybe looking to smooth things over a bit and earn some good will, AT&T is boosting the caps on two of its Mobile Share Value plans.
Cricket Wireless might not be top of mind among US carriers, but it's starting to get aggressive as it goes after T-Mobile and MetroPCS customers. After introducing a $100 bill credit promotion last month, Cricket is now boosting data caps by up to 100% later this week. And what's better, existing customers get the increased caps too.
As other carriers have ended unlimited data in recent years, Sprint has held firm. This was perhaps the saving grace of its network as Sprint struggled to catch up to other carriers in the race for LTE coverage. According to a report from Fierce Wireless, Sprint is going to be pulling back a bit on unlimited 3G/4G data for the biggest users on its network. Beginning as soon as next month in some markets, anyone who falls in the top 5% of data consumers could potentially be throttled down to ensure others can get connectivity.
AT&T is looking to make its prepaid service a bit more competitive with the options from carriers like T-Mobile and various MVNOs. The new GoPhone plans include increased data caps and free WiFi tethering. The best part – current customers get the upgrade automatically with no increased charge.
Update: While the app is no longer behind the Play Store beta wall, Opera is apparently waiting before they throw the switch. The Opera blog post said access to the general public was first come, first serve, but there's a waiting list in the app right now. Opera is allowing everyone access, but it's happening slowly, probably to manage server load.
AT&T is apparently cracking the whip when it comes to popular MVNO Net10. The company has announced on its site that new AT&T data caps went into effect on March 1. From here on out, all AT&T SIMs on Net10 will be limited to 1.5GB of high-speed data on the "unlimited" plan. If you want more bytes, a T-Mobile SIM is your only option.