AT&T grandfathered unlimited plans pricing hike incoming [UPDATE]

By Chris Burns/Updated: Dec. 1, 2015 10:26 am EST

The release date for the increase of prices for AT&T's grandfathered Unlimited Data plans has struck – coming your way this February. At that time, AT&T will hike the price from $30 for an unlimited data plan – which is insane by today's standards – to $35 USD. SO it's not so terrible. For now. This keeps AT&T's prices below the hikes of their main competition, with Verizon's still at $49 a month and T-Mobile's at $45. Then there's the throttling. Always with the throttling.

Verizon's boost by $20 came just this September, while T-Mobile's jump from $30 to $45 came nearer the beginning of November. These jumps in price were all* for grandfathered-in Unlimited Data pricing plans, mind you – plans which the very, very few people who still subscribe are very, very loathe to let go of. And they all throttle your speed.

Or did, until they got caught.

*UPDATE: T-Mobile informs us that no existing T-Mobile customers had any price increase when their Unlimited plan changed from $30 to $45. This article also erroneously had the higher ($95) plan listed instead of T-Mobile's $45 plan. Changes have been made!

You might be asking yourself – what about Sprint? Don't they have an Unlimited plan too? Yes and no. Sprint has an Unlimited plan that includes 1GB of data at $20 per month. After you reach 1GB of data, you can still keep using data, but it'll be delivered at 2G speed. That's barely usable with any network, much less Sprint. So it's not all really as "Unlimited" as you'd expect.

Word of AT&T's price hike comes via 9to5Mac, and it basically means that while those with grandfathered Unlimited Data plans will be able to continue using said plans, prices will continue to rise until they're priced out of sensibility. This might take a while, but it'll happen.

What can anyone do about the pricing-out and the throttling? Not much. Unless you happen to be millions of mobile customers reading this article concurrently, in which case you could probably just vote with your money, so to speak.