AT&T Ends Contract Pricing For Tablets With 3G/4G Access

AT&T internal documentation has confirmed that the carrier has ended the practice of subsidizing tablets under 2 year agreements with data plans this past weekend after it initially did so in order to spur sales of both tablets and increasingly lucrative data plans, with the end result that customers prefer Wi-Fi access for tablets and disliked the expense associated with adding another separate data plan for one device. This means that tablets such as the iPad with LTE will be sold for their MSRP, all the way up to $899 depending on storage size.

Although many customers prefer Wi-Fi access for tablets, another issue for AT&T was device cost, as 3G/4G enabled tablets tended to average $150-$200 higher than Wi-Fi only variants and were initially meant to be subsidized identically to smartphones, until slower than expected sales and lack of  real demand coupled with data plan cost meant that AT&T often sank millions into tablet models with very little in the way of return, the most obvious example being the HTC JetStream Android tablet, a tablet better known for its exorbitant $799 retail pricing before a 2 year agreement meant to drive the cost down and 4G LTE support, despite being an average Android tablet in terms of performance.

With AT&T ending such contracts and subsidies, this may in fact be the best way for it to move forward as it prepares to launch its optional for now Mobile Share plans this week in an attempt to drive multiple device sales outside of smartphones and seeks to grow its data revenue with LTE, since the more data devices it can sell the more the carrier can try and extol the virtues of its new shared plans, with tablets being cheaper to add on the Mobile Share plans at $10 per device, compared to the $40 per device cost of smartphones on the new plans.