AT&T bumps data on $40, $70 Mobile Share Value plans by 50%; Verizon in turn bumps data for $80, $100 More Everything plans by 33%, 50%
AT&T and Verizon Boost Monthly Wireless Data in Ongoing Competition [iOS Blog] — In recent weeks, multiple carriers including AT&T, Verizon …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second round of a tit-for-tat that started when AT&T rolled out new double data offers at the start of October, which Verizon and Sprint matched within days. Now AT&T has made the bump permanent on its $40 and $70 Mobile Share Value tiers, and Verizon has answered inside the same news cycle by lifting data 33% and 50% on its $80 and $100 More Everything plans.
The battlefield itself is a 2012 construct: both carriers built their shared-plan lineups that year — Verizon's Share Everything and AT&T's Mobile Share Value — so today's moves are adjustments to structures both companies have been tuning for two years, with Verizon having already repriced More Everything once back in February.
First-order effects
- Subscribers on AT&T's $40 and $70 Mobile Share Value plans and Verizon's $80 and $100 More Everything plans get 50%, 33%, and 50% more monthly data respectively at unchanged prices — an immediate effective price cut per gigabyte for existing customers on those exact tiers.
- Verizon's response confirms AT&T's October move reset the competitive baseline: neither carrier can hold its old allotments while the other advertises more data at the same price point.
Second-order effects
- Sprint, which had already followed AT&T's lead with its own double-data offer earlier in the month, faces pressure to extend its match upmarket as the two largest carriers keep escalating.
- With headline prices frozen and data allotments inflating, the per-gigabyte economics of mid-tier shared plans compress — pushing carriers toward monetizing elsewhere on the bill, from device financing to overage and premium-tier upsells.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, data volume becomes the standard promotional currency of US wireless — a giveaway cycle that is easier to launch than to retract, as later reporting on AT&T and Verizon raising prices on older plans suggests carriers eventually claw value back through legacy-plan repricing rather than cutting advertised rates.
- Sustained allotment inflation without price increases points toward consolidation pressure on smaller carriers whose networks cannot absorb the same data growth at flat revenue per subscriber.
The trend: US carrier competition is migrating from headline price cuts to data-allotment escalation, with each AT&T move forcing a Verizon match within weeks.