This just in: Puretalk lowers their basic plan to $20.
Actually, a lot of pricing sleight of hand happened with their plans on October 1st. It's not as awesome a change as it looks like. There's also a shift from hard data caps to "unlimited" 2G throttled data above the high speed data cap, which now eliminates yet
another MVNO from the tethering pool...
Plans
before change as of September 2017:
$10 300 minutes, 300 SMS, 50 MMS and 50 MB of data
$24 unlimited minutes, messages and 1 GB of data
$29 unlimited minutes, messages and 3 GB of data
$35 unlimited minutes, messages and 5 GB of data
$45 unlimited minutes, messages and 7 GB of data
Plans
after change as of October 2017:
$20 unlimited minutes, messages and data with the first 500 MB at high speed
$25 unlimited minutes, messages and data with the first 1 GB at high speed
$30 unlimited minutes, messages and data with the first 3 GB at high speed
$35 unlimited minutes, messages and data with the first 5 GB at high speed
$45 unlimited minutes, messages and data with the first 10 GB at high speed
So in reality? They eliminated the $10 plan while introducing an "unlimited" $20 plan with 500MB of data (thus increasing their per user revenue by $10/line with new subscribers), jacked the 1GB and 3GB plans up a buck a month, threw in an extra 3GB/month bone on their $45/month plan (despite the fact that most average data usage according to industry metrics still doesn't come anywhere
near 10GB/month, let alone 7GB/month), and eliminated data tethering in exchange for "unlimited" data just fast enough after the cap to check your email and browse websites with images off for everyone - despite the fact that most lower data plan users rarely ever hit their limit in the first place, and confident that if the user does so more than twice, they're likely to go up to the next tier anyway without increasing their data habits to match. Such a deal!
(Remember, Airvoice exploited these same user habits in another creative manner with their data plans for years by splitting the data in half, leaving you to activate the second half if you hit your first half cap in a month. Many people just thought they hit their monthly cap, and jumped up to the next tier; or even if they did know, they still jumped up to the next tier or left to avoid the hassle of calling in.)So, yeah... "lowers their basic plan to $20" is a wee bit misleading. Nothing but price hikes in reality, and it's spun like the change is all wine and roses.
I can't fault them, though. They have to do something to ensure they stay profitable in the new market. I'm not jumping for joy, though. Two AT&T MVNOs make stealth per-line rate hikes while distracting customers with the "new unlimited ______" smokescreen, while a third AT&T MVNO has rumor swirling around them about financial troubles during increased difficulties reaching customer support all within about a 36 hour window. Meanwhile, Red Pocket is making a heavy discounted
annual subscription push currently with their Essentials and Best Value plans...
...the accounting is getting increasingly creative, and it's clear providers are trying to gamble on reduced minute and text usage by the average consumers to offset the data cost to offer more of it since everyone is clamoring for more data than anything else. These are the situations where "unlimited" can get dangerous for everyone involved.