AT&T to 'streamline' texting plans by essentially doubling fee

AT&T has a favor planned for its customers, who it says prefer unlimited plans.

Starting Sunday, it has confirmed, new customers will no longer be offered 1,000 messages for $10 a month, but instead unlimited messages for $20. Family plans with up to five lines will continue to be offered unlimited texting for $30 a month.

If $20 seems steep, users may opt to instead pay $0.20 by per text, though this would benefit only those outliers sending well under 100 texts a month. According to Chetan Sharma Consulting, Americans are now the world's heaviest users of text messaging, sending an average 664 messages a month. (CP: Verizon, AT&T account for 69% of mobile data revenue) Pew Research has even found teenage girls to send and receive an average of 100 texts a day.

The $10/1,000 messages plan is being grandfathered, so current AT&T customers won't be affected, and the spokesperson said they can hold on to their messaging plans "when changing handsets"

With an iPhone 5 on its way, and LTE plans in the works, AT&T is perhaps not too worried about alienating new customers by essentially — as many are likely to view it — doubling its texting rates.

"The price of texting is an abomination," Roger Kay, principal analyst with Endpoint Technologies, told Connected Planet. "Text is just a data type, and a lightweight one at that. It costs the operators nothing and they change egregiously for it. Pretty soon, text will disappear, displaced by IM, chat services on social networks, and Skype."

With the iPhone 5, for example, Apple is expected to launch iMessage, an app enabling iOS-running devices to send messages to other iOS devices over their data connection.

"By putting this outrageous plan into action, AT&T will just accelerate the flight from traditional text services," said Kay. "The company may think that it's enhancing revenue, but more like it's hastening the death of the service. Text shouldn't cost users anything."