Leaked: New ATT text messaging plans in preparation for Verizon iPhone
AT&T customers, get ready for new text messaging rates to go into effect starting next week. As the Verizon iPhone approaches, the company is looking to make their plans look a bit more attractive, and not so different from what Verizon will be offering.
Context & Ripple Effects
This leak lands one week after Verizon made official what four years of rumors anticipated: a deal to carry Apple's iPhone, announced by president Lowell McAdam on January 12th, ending AT&T's exclusive hold on the device. AT&T has not been silent about the stakes — it publicly acknowledged losing exclusivity and said it had prepared a response, with Business Week already asking how much of an iPhone threat to AT&T is real given its subscriber base skews heavily iPhone, per comScore's confirmed 15-to-1 ratio over Android.
The leaked change itself — new messaging rates taking effect January 23rd — reads as the first visible piece of that preparation: repricing plans so they look closer to what Verizon will offer, removing one more reason for an existing iPhone owner to switch carriers. It follows the same playbook as earlier AT&T feature rollouts timed to the device, like the 2009 MMS launch notification pushed to iPhone users.
First-order effects
- AT&T subscribers face new text messaging rates beginning January 23rd, per the leaked schedule reported by Gear Live and picked up by SlashGear.
Second-order effects
- With both AT&T and Verizon selling the same handset, Verizon's launch pricing becomes the benchmark AT&T is visibly matching — competition shifts from who carries the iPhone to whose plan costs less.
Third-order effects
- If handset parity erases exclusivity as a differentiator, US carriers' structural battleground moves entirely to rate-plan design and retention offers — the pattern AT&T's own stated preparation for losing the iPhone exclusive implies, and one Verizon began positioning for as far back as its 2009 iPhone preparations.
The trend: The end of iPhone exclusivity is pushing US wireless competition from device access into pricing and plan design, with carriers repricing within weeks of each other's hardware lineups converging.