AT&T may stop offering any two-year contracts by the end of May

If you’ve bought a phone from AT&T recently, you’re probably familiar with their Next program. The financing program was designed as a competitor to T-Mobile’s JUMP plan so consumers could purchase their phones without entering into a contract and tangling their phone payments into their phone service plans. Unlike T-Mobile, AT&T continued to offer two-year upgrades alongside financing options, but it looks like that might come to an end in May this year.

Rumors point towards the carrier completely doing away with two-year contracts and moving exclusively to Next financing plans next month, leaving customers with that as their only option to purchase a new device if they don’t want to buy the phone outright. Fortunately for customers on AT&T’s newer mobile share value plans, Next pricing is pretty similar to two-year pricing, but it’s not good news for anyone hanging onto older plans, including unlimited data plans.

Moving to Next on an old unlimited data plan would basically be like purchasing the phone outright, as there’s no off-contract discount built-in to those older plans. Customers with unlimited data wanting to upgrade would be forced to switch to a newer plan, or buy the phone at full retail (or buy used) to keep that plan.

To be fair, this is exactly T-Mobile’s stance on the issue, so AT&T isn’t the first carrier to want customers to go exclusively to device financing. It’s not fantastic news for customers still clinging to unlimited data packages, but that’s where the wireless industry is heading.

If this rumor ends up panning out next month, who wants to take a guess how long it’ll take for Verizon and Sprint to follow suit?

source: Android Authority

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