AT&T, one of the major U.S carriers headquartered in Texas, announced made announced on its consumer blog a revision on their phone upgrade eligibility.
Almost two months ago, Verizon Wireless changed its phone upgrade policy from 20 months to 24 months eligibility. It simply means that customers will need to wait to finish their two-year contract before they become eligible for a discounted phone upgrade. Existing contracts that will expire after January 2014 are covered in the new policy.
The policy change that Verizon had AT&T of an advantage until it made a similar announcement. Starting today, customers who have existing contracts that will expire March 2014 will have to wait an additional four months as the company changed the phone upgrade eligibility from 20 to 24 months as well, mirroring Verizon’s.
Sprint remained on a 20 month policy and has not made any announcement yet on any plans so far. T-Mobile has closed down the traditional contracts and transitioned to installment plans.
The AT&T Upgrade Advantage policy allows customers to upgrade from the same device category- tablet to tablet, smartphone to smartphone. The upgrade can also be shared with another person on the customer’s account.
Different reactions from customers flooded online as many were are thinking of switching to another carrier offering better contract eyeing T-Mobile’s $50/month for unlimited talk, text and 500MB unthrottled data. However, there are still some who are considering staying because of the 3G coverage and plan the company offers. There were also speculations that AT&T and Verizon had teamed up to manipulate the contract policies for wireless plans.
Verizon Wireless holds the number one spot while AT&T is runner up among 18 mobile companies in the U.S. AT&T has 107 million subscribers as of 2012 and provides 3G networks in 372 cities as of February 2012.
