AT&T And T-Mobile Jump On The Unlimited Bandwagon

If there is one thing you can count on in the tele-com industry, it's that if one company offers a deal or makes a change, all the others will be short to follow with their own version or a direct rip of the original idea.

Earlier, we brought you confirmation of Verizon's Unlimited voice plans. And, as if they were Lemmings in Spring, AT&T and T-Mobile jumped off the Unlimited minutes cliff. Both AT&T and T-Mobile announced this afternoon, only a few short hours after the official Verizon announcement, that they will both bring $99 unlimited minute plans to their customers. There are a few differences in the plans to pay attention to though.

AT&T's plan is just minutes, with messaging and data plans as add ons, compared to the bundled packages from Verizon. At the end of the day, it looks like these two balance each other out to about the same thing, but the T-Mobile plan throws in a twist: their $99 plan will also include text and picture messaging and IM.

I'm not too sure that these plans will affect that many people at the end of the day, but it's a nice alternative. I may jump on board myself, as my home phone plan and my cell phone plan add up to more than one of these unlimited packages, so I can see some value there. The next question is how will these new plans figure into the U-Verse and FiOS bundles from, respectively, AT&T and Verizon?

Press Release [AT&T]
Press Release [T-Mobile]