GoKawiilUsing an old AT&T wireless plan? You’ll see a hike in your bill going forward. Joseph Maldonado/CNET
More AT&T customers are about to see a price increase on their wireless phone bills starting this week.
In April, long-term customers hanging onto old phone plans learned they would see mandatory monthly surcharges added to their bills. Now, the pool of affected subscribers has expanded, with the charges coming in August to people who activated plans as recently as November.
On a support page that went live when it announced its revamped “2.0” unlimited phone plans, the carrier revealed that the prices of its “retired” unlimited wireless plans — the ones that customers who haven’t upgraded are still using — would go up by as much as $20 starting in April.
Originally, it applied to plans activated before July 24, 2025. Now, the support page includes a notice that the fees will also apply to plans between July 24 and Nov. 1, 2025. That includes Unlimited Premium PL, Unlimited Extra EL and Value Plus VL plans.
Making sense of the hiked prices
AT&T implemented two price changes. If your account with a “retired” plan has a single line, the price went up $10. If you have two or more lines on an account, the price increase was capped at $20 for the account.
Perhaps to offset the sting, affected plans get an extra 20GB of high-speed hotspot data each month.
However, not everyone is seeing the same deal.
As an AT&T mobile plan subscriber myself, when I signed into my own AT&T account to compare options, I was directed to a different support page that said prices would go up $5 per smartphone line. For hotspot, AT&T added 10GB of extra high-speed data — presumably to each line, but that’s not specified. The page reads, “Starting in August 2026, accounts with wireless lines that didn’t have an increase in April and activated or moved to an affected plan between July 24, 2025 and November 1, 2025 will now see the price change on your bill.”
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