AT&T Wireless Plan "Mobile Share Advantage" Will Throttle Your Data

This week the folks at AT&T have introduced another data plan for the masses, one we're about to run down and tear apart for you right now. This new data plan's name is very similar to the other plans AT&T has available. While this new plan offers data without overage charges, users will find their data speeds throttled to a much slower rate once they've run through their allotted data for the month. Pricing is also extremely similar to previous plans.

Two plans users should be aware of are as follows: Mobile Share Value and the new Mobile Share Advantage. These plans are very similar – extremely similar. The first chart you'll see shows the Mobile Share Value plan's pricing – as listed on AT&T's site right this minute.

Up next is the new Mobile Share Advantage plan from AT&T in a chart which shows which tiers are available for which prices.

In AT&T's press release for this updated data plan, they suggest that they've got the following available now: "For example, if you have 2 smartphone lines on a current Mobile Share Value 5GB plan for $100 per month, you can now get the new Mobile Share Advantage 6GB plan – 1 additional GB of data for the same price, plus no overages."

That's only true if AT&T made a mistake in the release and actually meant 16GB, not 6GB.

The data throttling AT&T is bringing to this new set of data plans (instead of overage charges) goes like so, according to the company: "No charge for overage. After all your high-speed data allotments are used, all data usage is slowed to a max of 128 Kbps (2G speed) for the rest of the bill cycle."

"You will have basic data use for viewing a web page or checking email," continues AT&T, "Audio and video streaming, picture and video messaging, select apps and other services, as well as other usage, including sponsored data, will be impacted and may not be fully functional."

Of course this all also hinges on the line which is also included in the chart above: "All Mobile Share Advantage plans also have an access charge of $10 – $40 a month per device not included in prices shown above."

Users will want to be aware of how much extra per device they'll be paying for this "access charge" before they make a final decision.