Just a few days after T-Mobile declared itself the "uncarrier" by providing users with a plan that lets them buy a phone and not sign up for a lengthy contract, AT&T has decided to follow suit and head down the same road with its customers, offering the AT&T Next program for customers.
The plan allows customers to pay for their own smartphones in monthly installments and enables an annual upgrade to a smartphone or tablet. Thanks to AT&T Next, users can now purchase their phones on a 20-month payment plan with no upfront fee and no contract, they simply need to pay the rest of the installment fees or pay everything off at once if they wish to leave the plan early. This plan is very similar to T-Mobile's new Jump plan, which it announced last week. The biggest difference is that T-Mobile's plan forces the customer to pay an upfront fee that goes as high as $150 a month for the Galaxy S4 with monthly payments of $20 on top of the service plan. The plan is between $15 and $50 a month depending on the device one wishes to use, according to CNET.
On the AT&T plan, an iPhone 5, for example, costs #32.50 a month, a Galaxy S4 costs $32, an HTC One costs $30. The plan can also include tablets. A 16GB iPad Mini costs $23 a month while a Galaxy Note 8.0 costs $25 a month. After one year, a customer can trade in his or her device for an upgrade.
This is a potentially lucrative move for T-Mobile and AT&T. No-contract plans help carriers avoid the expense of subsidizing new smartphone models, which they usually try to offset by signing their customers up for a long-term contract.
AT&T isn't completely doing away with its two-year contract options. In addition, it is hoping to be more appealing than AT&T by offering superior LTE coverage and roughly twice the markets as the T-Mobile plans.
