Today I will compare my current AT&T plan and a potential T-Mobile plan for five telephones: Four family members and a friend – yes one of those. I am currently with AT&T, and I started to llok at reducing my wireless phone bill by switching to T-Mobile.
My two-year contract with AT&T ended a few months back, and I only pay $15 per phone instead of the $40 mobile data plan.
The table below includes the types of plans and the dollar costs, showing a difference of about $43.45.
AT&T: 15 GB shared plan with month-to-month rollover of unused data.
T-Mobile: It offers unlimited data but limits to 2.5GB per phone at 4G LTE until February 2016 when the 4G LTE speed service is available for only the first 1 GB per phone. After the 2.5GB (through 2016) and 1GB (after 2016), the service is throttled down to 2G speeds until the end of the billing period. Four more information about the 2G and 4G speeds, read this article
To increase the data plan to 3 GB, T-Mobile asks for $10 extra. Our total data plan will then be 15 GB (five phones with 3 GB each). Such a data plan will be comparable to our current AT&T 15 GB plan. The final cost of the T-Mobile would be plan will cost us at least $189.55, and the coverage is not as good as AT&T, especially in the rural areas.
The better coverage in rural areas with AT&T and larger amount of data at 4G make it worthwhile for me stay with AT&T.