AT&T has announced that customers of its Mobile Share Value plan will be allowed to roll over their unused data from the previous month starting Jan. 25.
Customers will not be required to do anything at all. The monthly data rollover will be a permanent feature for family and business customers on AT&T's shared plan, which harkens back to the days when mobile carriers provided a similar feature for unused monthly call credits.
"Rollover data is an added benefit of being an AT&T Mobile Share Value customer and it's just another way that we're saying thanks to our more than 50 million plus Mobile Share Value subscribers," says AT&T Mobility president and CEO Glenn Lurie in a statement. "We're providing even more value and flexibility, and the best part is it's simple, shareable and easy to track for our customers. All Mobile Share Value customers get this automatically."
To illustrate, a customer with four lines in a 15-gigabyte plan and only uses 10 gigabytes of that plan will have 5 gigabytes to roll over for the next month. This means he will receive an additional 5 gigabytes of data for the second month and have a total of 20 gigabytes for use among all four lines.
The feature is not without its caveats, though. For one thing, customers cannot use their rollover data unless they have run out of the regular data they have for the month. Also, they can only use rollover data during the second month. Once the third month rolls around, their rollover data from last month disappears.
So if, on his second month on a 15-gigabyte plan with a 5-gigabyte rollover, the customer only uses 10 gigabytes out of the 20 gigabytes he receives for the month, the unused rollover data from last month will not roll over to the next month. He will, however, have 5 gigabytes of data from the standard plan to roll over to the next month.
Moreover, the feature is only available to subscribers of AT&T's shared plan, which means customers on personal plans will not be able to roll over their unused data. It is unclear if AT&T will offer a similar feature to personal customers.
The move is clearly AT&T's knee-jerk reaction to T-Mobile's Data Stash announcement made last week that allows customers to use their rollover data for an entire year before any unused data evaporates. Unlike AT&T's scheme, however, T-Mobile is not allowing rollover data for business customers.
Still, analysts are aware that T-Mobile's actions are stirring up the entire mobile industry, not just Sprint. Previously, AT&T and Verizon seemed unshakable over T-Mobile's Un-carrier tactics, but it is clear now the AT&T is being affected by T-Mobile's moves.
"T-Mobile has shaken up the industry and the others have to respond, especially given T-Mobile's net new customers," says analyst Jack Gold at J. Gold Associates. "The other carriers, including AT&T and Verizon and not just Sprint, are being affected by the aggressiveness of T-Mobile. For a long time, the big guys kind of ignored what T-Mobile did, but not anymore."
T-Mobile has announced that it has gained a total of 2.1 million new customers over the fourth quarter last year, a 47 percent year-over-year increase.
