AT&T Ups Data for Prepaid GoPhone Customers

AT&T made its prepaid offerings a little more competitive yesterday when it doubled the amount of data offered to its GoPhone customers. Customers on the $5 data plan will now get 50 MB, the $15 plan comes with 200 MB and the $25 plan comes with 1 GB. The new plans go into effect April 22. The data plans are an add-on to AT&T's $50 all-you-can-eat talk and text prepaid plan and its $25 prepaid plan, which comes with unlimited text messaging and 250 voice minutes. AT&T prepaid customers adding data to their plans will end up paying $30 on the low end and $75 on the high end, depending on which rates they choose. AT&T has traditionally been a postpaid shop, focusing on lucrative on-contract customers. Its new plans will help make its no-contract services more attractive to customers who typically go with cost-competitive prepaid providers. Even so, AT&T's plans are still more costly than its competitors. Sprint prepaid brand Virgin Mobile USA offers an unlimited data plan with 300 voice minutes for just $35. T-Mobile's $50 prepaid plan comes with unlimited voice calls, text messages and data, with a 100 MB cap before speed throttling sets in. Verizon Wireless also offers a $50 prepaid plan with unlimited talk, text and Internet access. Smaller prepaid providers tend to be more cost-competitive than their larger rivals. MetroPCS unlimited prepaid plans start off at $40, with 250 MB of full-speed data before customers are knocked down to slower rates. Cricket's all-you-can-eat data plans start at $45 per month.