In an effort to lock up residential and small business voice bundles, AT&T revised its AT&T Unity calling plan to include ‘rollover’ minutes and unlimited free calling within their landline and wireless customer base. Customers are now able to call up to ‘100 million’ phone numbers, both wireline and wireless, and not have those calls count against their wireless minutes of use. The changes now also include the rollover of unused minutes from month to month over a 12 month period.
AT&T continues to leverage its scale with its growing bundling strategies. To qualify for this plan, prospective customers must subscribe to both wireline and wireless service from AT&T and choose to have them on a single bill. Yet another example of how larger telecom carriers are leveraging their wireline and wireless network assets to offer bundling strategies that their cable MSO competitors are challenged to meet. Pivot wireless is the cable industry’s answer to the wireless issue, but its been slow to get off the ground. AT&T is trying to seize the advantage, while they still have it.
