Wednesday, February 9, 2011

AT&T (NYSE:T) Offers Unlimited Mobile-to-Mobile Before Verizon (NYSE:VZ) iPhone Release

In what could be construed as panic or an attempt to steal some of Verizon's (NYSE:VZ) thunder, AT&T (NYSE:T) announced a day before the release of their Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone that they're going to offer customers mobile-to-mobile calling on any carrier.

David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said in a press release, "Mobile to Any Mobile is an exciting offer that will keep our customers connected to the people they want to talk to, when they want to talk to them, without the hassle of watching minutes. We're giving customers more options and even better value. And when you include Rollover Minutes, a benefit available exclusively from AT&T that lets customers keep their unused minutes for all domestic calls, including to landline numbers, it's clear that AT&T offers the most flexibility in the industry."

Why AT&T didn't release a torrent of changes before the iPhone release on Verizon is puzzling. Every few days they could have made some type of announcement leading up to the release, which would have, at minimum, kept them in the minds of their customers and may put a question mark there as to whether or not they should leave them for Verizon.

This wouldn't be for those who have already made their minds up. Some were so dissatisfied with AT&T that nothing was going to keep them with the company.

It would rather have been for those who were still mulling over whether to keep using their service or not. Normally those are the largest numbers, and should have been who AT&T targeted.

Maybe some will be swayed by the new plan, but most probably won't even hear about it at this late stage of the game. Verizon was trading at $36.60, up $0.26, or 0.72 percent, as of 1:45 PM EST. AT&T was trading at $27.99, up $0.08, or 0.27 percent. Apple was trading at $358.00, up $2.80, or 0.79 percent.

1 comment:

Marshall said...

Thanks so much Verizon for getting ATT to wake up and finally including this. I got tried of waiting around for options this so I went to prepaid – specifically to an unlimited plan with the options ATT couldn’t provide. Instead of paying $75 or even $90 with an add-on like this, I’m paying $45 and its totally, totally unlimited everything. I do miss the ATT network at times, since Straight Talk uses the Verizon network and there is a coverage difference, but its not enough to tempt me back.