So a couple of weeks ago I bought a new phone and was it was a 5g. I was told my bill would go up "slightly" as our previous plan was for two 4g phones. I got my bill today and it went from 96 after taxes to 189 dollars for two phone lines. I was reading online there is a way to change a 5g phone to 4g but may phone does not seem to have that option. Also, this is an ATT phone.

So assuming I am fucked with ATT, where should I go?

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If I had to guess, the bill for your service did not go up much, but you probably signed a lease or finance contract for the cost of the phone. So the increase in your bill is to cover the cost of the new phone(s).

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Hawaii (fuck) You

No such thing as a 5G phone that does not also do 4G LTE currently, afaik.

and deactivating 5G won't have any impact on your bill--ATT will still bill you for 5G if that's your plan and you don't use it.

But if you want to deactivate 5G, use a 4G sim card.

I think ATT contract plans require 4 lines before they offer family / multi line discount?

Switch to ATT prepaid, you won't get the same deals on hardware as they offer to contract customers, but you can get discounts for multi-line starting at 2 lines for 90$ out the door (inclusive of taxes and fees, partly b/c prepaid shit is mostly tax exempt)

https://www.att.com/att/prepaid-family/

Grab a Nokia or Motorola or OnePlus Nord for a few hundred out the door to pair with your prepaid plan.

Spectrum has a crazy cheap mobile plan. I think the 29.99 spectrum unlimited plan includes all taxes and fees per month?

https://www.spectrum.com/mobile

caveats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=620Ns87JtOE

1. must have spectrum internet
2. must sign up as a new customer with 2+ lines
3. supposedly Spectrum's throttling after 20 GB per line is real and brutal. But throttling likely not an issue if you mostly use the device for high bandwidth uses while on wifi


Spectrum = Verizon towers

There's also Cricket, which uses ATT towers with slightly lower priority on the network.

2 lines for 40$ a line = 70 dollars a month for 2 lines out the door after 10 dollar a month auto-pay discount on cricket

I think all prepaid plans prices include all taxes and fees nowadays. Strangely, prepaid cell phone service is exempt from Telecommunications Excise Tax and possibly other wireless service taxes depending on the state/city.

It's kind of stupid at this point to be paying extra for the same service by not going prepaid.

I already paid the phone off.

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There is an option on my portal to go back to my 4g plan which was $70 for two lines and 3gb of data. They will not let me select it right now because I have a 5g phone.

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if you own the phone and it's an ATT device, switch to ATT prepaid 2 line. 90 dollars a month is all you'll pay ( 45$ a line after auto-pay and multi-line discount ) for unlimited everything.

your paid off ATT devices will not work on Spectrum (or Verizon).

They should work on Cricket as well, as Cricket is just an ATT sub-brand, same towers.

70 dollars a month for 3GB of data? Tell em to fuck off if you're not under contract; which if your devices are paid off you should be off contract. Go to wal-mart and buy a couple ATT prepaid simcards and you can switch over to att prepaid online. Might be able to go into an ATT store and have them switch you over to prepaid as well.

Main reason to be in a contract situation is to get discounts on iphones and pay them off over time. Although the employees in the store will try to sell you on re-upping for a shiny new device for another 3 years.

If you're not an iPhone slut, no need to be paying higher contract rates and taxes.

you could also drop down to 70 dollars a month for unlimited everything with auto-pay discount for 2 lines on Cricket. Your paid off ATT devices should work on Cricket as well. Tho you might have to contact ATT and get the unlock code, which if you've paid them off they have to give you. Might be able to unlock them online as well.

Uh .. you can get ATT for $25/month with unlimited calls, texts and 8GB data . Search for ATT prepaid promo plan

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Make sure you ask for free nights and weekends. Also, ask about rolling over your unused minutes into next month.

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make sure they didnt charge you extra for activation. they always say on the phone to me they won't charge BUT if you see it on the bill, call back and they'll take the charge off.

of course they do it on purpose in case you forget or are too busy.

those are the pay $300 for 12 months up front or $99 for 3 months up front plans:

https://www.att.com/prepaid/multi-month-plans/

8GB is pretty good, if you're careful about not doing any heavy video streaming while off wifi.

i use easytether for mobile internet access/backup internet at home when home internet craps the bed. so i just get the unlimited plans for 10 dollars more a month (70 dollars a month for 2 lines unlimited everything, $35 a line) after auto-pay and multi-line discounts. considering running over just 1 GB will cost 10 dollars, it's worth it.

About 6 months ago Cricket uncapped the speeds across all of their plans. Previously they mucked about capping speeds on unlimited plans above a certain usage level. Now it's full speed for as many GB's as you can eat each month.

I have ATT prepaid as well for an RV wifi router from GL.iNet and I've noticed after you get above about 20GB in a month and you do a lot of data in a day ATT will start to throttle a bit. Next day you'll get a gigabyte or something unthrottled again. And then once your plan month resets on ATT you get the first 20 or so gb unthrottled before triggering a daily unthrottled limit.

Spectrum throttles all data after 20 gb per line per month on their 29.99 unlimited plan.

So if you want max speeds for max GB at the lowest price, it's currently Cricket.

i think visible is best bang for buck right now... but att prepaid is great at $300/yr. they roll over unused data (i think up to 4gb) so i usually have at least 10 available every month. just sucks they dont consecutive months rollover.

but also, att prepaid uses all of their towers, bands, and doesnt prioritize like all the mvno's do, including cricket. i get better reception and when in big crowds it still works... where cricket would often fail to have any bandwidth (even if full bars)

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.