Skip to main content

AT&T confirms its plan to end two-year contracts on January 8

AT&T confirmed it will end two-year contracts on January 8, 2016 for its smartphone service plans. Currently, AT&T is the only major U.S. carrier offering contracts on its website. T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon all killed contracts recently. Internal documents published by Engadget initially revealed AT&T’s planned changes to coverage.

Updated on 12-30-2015 by Malarie Gokey: Added confirmation from AT&T that it will end two-year contracts.

Recommended Videos

After January 8, AT&T will sell smartphones at full retail price or through installment plans like its current Next program. Customers will pay monthly for a data plan and unlimited talk and text, but won’t have an obligation to keep the data plan, as long as they’ve paid for the phone.

“With $0 down for well-qualified customers, the ability to upgrade early and down-payment options available with even lower monthly installments, our customers are overwhelmingly choosing AT&T Next,” AT&T told Re/code. “Starting January 8, AT&T Next will be the primary way to get a new smartphone at AT&T.”

No further details were revealed by AT&T.

The new policy should, hopefully, make AT&T’s data pricing more competitive when compared to T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint. The wireless carrier is the last of the major four to remove two-year contracts, and if rumors are correct, it has been looking into it for the best part of this year.

According to the leaked document, flip phones and feature phones, named “Quick Messaging Devices” by AT&T, will receive the same treatment. Neither the document nor AT&T mentioned contracts for business customers, meaning two-year contracts might still be around for businesses.

Wearables are another potential area where two-year contracts might remain, especially since AT&T has been heavily promoting two-year contracts for wearables like Samsung’s Gear S2.

Once two-year contracts for phones are gone, so will the lower subsidized prices of smartphones. Customers will have to pay the full-retail price of the smartphone over a certain amount of time. All four of the major carriers currently offer 24-month phone installment plan deals for smartphones, but that may soon be the only option available to customers.

David Curry
Former Digital Trends Contributor
David has been writing about technology for several years, following the latest trends and covering the largest events. He is…
This year’s big AT&T outage was worse than we thought
An at&t office building.

Back on February 22 this year, AT&T suffered a massive outage after a botched network update. Now, months later, the full scale of the outage has been revealed — and it’s much bigger than we thought at the time.

"All voice and 5G data services for AT&T wireless customers were unavailable, affecting more than 125 million devices, blocking more than 92 million voice calls, and preventing more than 25,000 calls to 911 call centers," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in its report.

Read more
T-Mobile just made its 5G Home Internet plan cheaper; here’s the new price
Cell phone tower shooting off pink beams with a 5G logo next to it.

T-Mobile, the nation's third-largest carrier, recently dropped the price of its home internet plan. The company is also offering a prepaid Mastercard for customers who sign up for the service.

As reported by CNET, the T-Mobile Home Internet plan is decreasing in price from $60 to $50 per month. This new rate includes a $5 monthly discount for enrolling in automatic payments. Customers can save up to $20 monthly when bundling the service with the company's Go5G Next, Go5G Plus, or Magenta Max phone plans.

Read more
T-Mobile is getting rid of its misleading ‘Price Lock’ policy
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert standing in front of a banner that reads Internet Freedom.

T-Mobile just got into some trouble with the National Advertising Program (NAD), a part of the BBB National Programs, an independent non-profit organization, for advertising its supposed “Price Lock” policy for 5G internet service.

Basically, the premise behind the “Price Lock” was a promise not to increase prices for customers who were on the Un-Contract Promise: “Starting January 18, 2024, customers activating or switching to an eligible rate plan get our Price Lock guarantee that only you can change what you pay—and we mean it!”

Read more