NEW YORK (AP) – Verizon, a longtime holdout, has joined other carriers in offering an unlimited data plan.
AT&T only lets customers sign up for unlimited plans when they also subscribe to DirecTV, which AT&T owns. But its prices are similar to Verizon’s for a family; Verizon is cheaper for an individual.
As recently as January, the company’s CFO said unlimited plans were “not something we feel the need to do” even though rivals had made inroads against Verizon by offering them. It has been trying to push longtime customers off its old unlimited plans, which it killed in 2012, with rate hikes.
The arrival of the iPhone and other smartphones made unlimited plans more of a rarity as carriers switched to bigger data plans with bigger price tags.
But Sprint and T-Mobile recognized in unlimited data an opportunity to snare customers from heavyweights Verizon and AT&T. Because carriers must poach each other’s customers to grow, the competition has intensified.