AT&T Is Raising the Rates for Its Older Unlimited Elite Plans

AT&T is raising the rates for its older Unlimited Elite plans. In an email sent out to customers on Wednesday, the carrier says that "starting with the August bill cycle" the price of the plan will increase by $2.50 per line, per month. The price hike was also detailed in an accompanying support page. 

Formerly AT&T's top unlimited plan, the Unlimited Elite option offered HBO Max (now just Max) and 40GB of hotspot data in addition to unlimited talk, text and data in the US, Mexico, Canada and 19 Latin American countries. It was discontinued last year and replaced with Unlimited Premium, which dropped the bundled HBO Max but added 10GB more of hotspot data. 

It was not immediately clear if Max's price increases earlier this year played a role in the new rate hike or if AT&T planned to raise the rates on older plans that similarly bundle in the streaming service. 

"We're committed to the relationships we hold with our customers and being transparent is paramount; all impacted customers were notified in mid-June," an AT&T spokesperson told CNET. "We want our customers to know they have options, and should they choose to make a change, we offer other rate plans that may provide different features that better suit their needs, including getting more mobile hotspot data for the same price." 

After retiring the Unlimited Elite plan last year, AT&T reached a new agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery last summer to be able to offer HBO Max to AT&T's wireless and internet users. Despite the new agreement, which talked about how AT&T would have "flexibility in how it delivers the service to customers," AT&T has yet to add the streaming option back to any of its wireless plans.  

The increase in the rate plan comes just days after AT&T began reaching out to customers to alert them that it would be lowering the discount it offers users who pay their bills with credit cards on automatic payments.

Update on July 26, 2023: Added statement from AT&T.