AT&T’s GoPhone service, in which customers can bring their own handsets and activate them under the carrier’s different tiered prepaid plans, is now widening to accept certain tablets. Announced via Twitter, the plans do not require annual contracts, and can be renewed on a monthly basis. GoPhone subscriptions consist of $15, $30, and $50 monthly options. These packages include 250MB, 3GB, and 5GB of data, respectively, with the ability to add more data. In May 2013, the service added support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network.
In addition to announcing a trio of new Android tablets, AT&T has also announced that it is expanding its GoPhone prepaid plans to support a handful of tablets, including the iPad mini and iPad 3. The GoPhone plans work by purchasing a $10 GoPhone SIM Kit then choosing a pre-paid data plan for your device. For $15/mo you’ll get 250MB of data and 100MB of additional data can be purchased for $10 each. $30 a month will get you 3GB and 500MB of additional data will run you $10. Finally, $50 per month will get you 5GB of data, with each additional GB costing $10. You can read the full list of compatible tablets on AT&T’s website. It’s odd that the iPad mini with Retina and iPad Air aren’t compatible with those prepaid GoPhone data plans. Most likely, however, it’s due to AT&T wanting to keep the GoPhone name associated with older and lower-end devices. With the recent deals we’ve been seeing on the iPad mini, it’s looking more and more appealing each day, especially when paired with somewhat affordable data.
