There are other ways around the gates.
Nineteen days ago, AT&T Wireless, with little fanfare, put the final nail in the coffin of metered voice and text plans. The company has made its “Mobile Share” plans the only option for new post-paid customers, killing off all plans that did not include shared data. “Our customers have expressed an overwhelming preference for simplified options that allow them to share data across multiple devices,” the company says in a blog on its corporate page, claiming that they are “simplifying” the selection of plans for new customers.
There’s simplicity at work, but it’s not for the benefit of AT&T Wireless’ 109 million subscribers. Like other cellular phone companies, AT&T’s cellular business measures the amount of money made from any given customer using a metric they call “Average Service Revenue Per User” or ARPU. Since they believe that the well for charging for texts and minutes (including overages) has run dry, they’ve since focused on data. Since January 2013, ARPU grew 16.6 percent on the sales of data plans and smartphones according to the company’s last quarterly statement. The company’s quarterly operating revenue was $32 billion. Continue reading