AT&T unveils new GoPhone plans

*This is what you miss when you skip town for a few days

When we heard last week that AT&T GoPhone was dropping its data add-ons in favor of new plans, you could excuse us for being skeptical. In the past AT&T has taken very consumer-friendly plans and eliminated them wholesale. This time, though, the alternatives look…not so bad. For starters, they’re allowing GoPhone customers access to their LTE network. That makes the highest-tier plan much more attractive, which was probably the point in the first place.

The $60 monthly unlimited plan, which includes unlimited voice and text, got a bump from 1GB of data to 2GB. Hard to complain about that. Additionally, customers can add additional gigs of data for $10 each. If you have an off-contract LTE phone, this looks like a pretty viable option. I’d pay $80 for unlimited voice and text plus 4GB of LTE data.

The other plans offer less data and charge more for overages. The $40 plan includes 500 minutes, unlimited messaging, and 200MB of data, with additional data costing $5 per 100MB. Previously AT&T charged $5 for 50MB and $15 for 200MB. The $25 plan includes 250 minutes and unlimited messaging, with data costing that old rate of $5 for 50MB.

So, basically, the more expensive your base plan the cheaper your data add-on. Customers on the $60 plan who had to pay $15 for 200MB or $25 for 1GB now get that 1GB for $10. There might be some instances where customers don’t get what they want, but overall these new plans look like an improvement — especially with the introduction of LTE on GoPhone.

Via FierceWireless.