so if i want to go from a single phone to a family plan no charges?

Why all the hate for AT&T? They've been pretty good to me. I get good cell coverage and good customer support. I also get a good discount (19%) from my plan and they have been trying to keep up with the latest handsets available in the US. Is it the whole locked iPhone thing? They seem to be reacting to customer complaints in a positive way.

Nice to keep a watchful eye on these giant corporations but I'd say this is a good move by AT&T. Of course, I'd prefer no early termination fee but I am a realist.

I've used AT&T for years, and I have the good, old-fashioned "I've never had a problem" review for their service. That said, the minute I'm wronged, I'm going to shriek like a banshee covered in napalm.

Madness? THIS. IS. CONSUMER ELECTRONICS. I love the internet.

monkey teeth are scary.

Wow, those photoshop skillz are better than the special effects team that worked on King Kong. Congrats!

They've never required an extention of your contract to make a change in your calling plan. They may not have had that in writing, but I've never had my previous contracts extended for changing my plan, which I did a few times. Verizon was the only one that ever required that, as far as I know.

Any cell phone contract is like a rock hard, icy cold dildo up my ass. AT&T's dildo just got a little bit smaller.

Pre-paid 4 life!

Doesn't matter, they will still be the fat kid in the Altell commercials.

@kevjohn: So, paying regular cell plans is like being sodomized by a frigid dildo, and pre-paid is like masturbation? Is there no happy medium?! (well......masturbation isn't THAT bad)

Good. AT&T seems to be wanting to get back on the good side of its customers. A little good press sure won't hurt them these days.

Strange, AT&T has been letting me do this for years - without extending my contract. I've had nothing but really good customer service from them, especially this year...I hope they keep it up.

@alin0steglinski: I did that exact thing 2 or 3 years ago - and there was no charge to add a line except for the line activation fee - which they waived because I was a long time customer.

I've been trying to get my services combined for a long time now. My wife got our Cingular service connected. I got AT&T (then Southwestern Bell) for our Home phone and Internet. However, they refuse to combine the two so I can't get a discount. Here's hoping...

Gizmodo kind of muffed the headline. Instead of focusing on what the Yahoo article did not explicitly cite as "new", they should have focused the title of the article on the REAL news... taking the FANGS out of early termination fees. This has been the huge deal that they're being sued for... charging the fee in full ANY time, no matter how close to contract completion. Now, that $175 early-termination fee will be depreciated by "time-served". Good stuff. Kind of sloppy, Giz.

Funny; I was miserable with Verizon for years. I switched to Cingular and have gotten nothing but love from them. The even happily unlocked my phone the day after they sent it to me.
I like that they will be prorated ETF thing though. That may pave the way toward better upgrade subsidies before my contract is up.

Awesome good news!
But unless they bring back the discontinued $30 plans, I for one won't be making use of these new services anytime soon.
$50/month iphone ftw!

They just told me that you're only allowed to change your plan during the first year of your contract. If you're past your first year, you're out of luck.

Agree with the others - I've switched my plan and moved things around many times with no extension of contract. Even on family plan they only extend 1 phone's contract for 2 years when you renew / get new hardware.
In fact - i've had a couple people leave my family plan to take their lines to their new families and they didn't force them to renew the contract, they were able to just happily pick up right where i left off.

Good to see the switch back to the prorated ETF's. That's how it used to be in the Bellsouth Mobility days and for a good while under Cingular in the ATL market.

They have never made you extend your contract to change your plan. I'm not sure where this story came from, but I've been with Cingular/At&t for 3 years now and I've changed my plan probably 10 times with no penalty.

I've been with them since 1996 and they've always extended my contract when I changed it. But I haven't changed it in a few years so I've escaped contract hell -- however I'm in another kind of AT&T purgatory:

I'm not on a contract because I stopped switching my plans once Cingular took over, since they didn't have a plan better than the one I already had. Luckily I had just switched to a GSM phone before that happened. I wanted to upgrade my handset and they tried to force me to get a Cingular plan, saying the AT&T SIM card was incompatible with the Cingular network. They won't issue a new SIM card without one of their plans. So I bought an unlocked phone and popped my AT&T SIM card in. No problems except they won't let me send or receive multimedia messages, only text. Though the name went back to AT&T, the same issue persists -- I can't send or receive pictures or videos, and can't get a new SIM card or handset without signing up for a new contract which would be either more expensive or would provide less talk time.

Of course, I stick by them because there is no calling plan out there as good as the one I have from long ago -- I guess I hit the sweet spot of AT&T's desperation before they sold their wireless division to Cingular. But given that I've been offering them my blood for over a decade (minus the cingular years) you'd think providing me with a new SIM card or giving me the "privilege" of giving them more money by buying a handset through them would be a courtesy I've more than earned.

Ah. Good re-title, guys.

They penalize you for changing your plan by taking away your Rollover minutes. But they don't make you extend your contract.

i have to say i like att better than verizon for alot of reasons. they hve better phones, cheaper services and decent coverage. the only thing that verizon had for me was better coverage and signal, but i live in new york so it might be just great in the big cities. att signal sucks sometimes. ill give verizon this when i cancelled to get an iphone they only charged me 100 dollars for my termination fee

I've been a Cellular One/Cingular/AT&T customer for about 14 years. I've changed my plans several times and never gotten an extension or lost my rollover minutes.

The "official" policy for ATT plans changing (formerly cingular) from my training was that ATT would allow you to change your contract as much as you wanted in the first 12 months of your contract, after 12 months your contract would be extended back out to 12 months.

to my knowledge, NO ONE really adheres to the contract extention policy. I haven't extended a single contract in over a year for changing your plan.

This policy change is nothing more than policy catching up to reality.

The pro-rated cancellation fee thing is good. Now if everyone switched to this, then I could convince twice as many people to switch to ATT.

@Zlevee: Old ATT WIRELESS chips are incompatible with the cingular phones and network. If your chip in your current phone is a cingular chip, you should be able to upgrade without changing your plan. If you were here I could do it for you without any issues whatsoever. If your plan is an old "americas choice" plan, then yes, its likely you would need to switch plans to an att plan.

If you have issues with your MMS in an unlocked phone, its because the servers arent set up correctly. Find a similar phone on the att website, look up its tutorials on mms and internet and copy settings into the phone. In store I have fixed at least 50 unlocked phones for this issue.

correction, att wireless chips are compatible with the network, but not with phones. didnt reread before posting.

@jayuup: It is an old AT&T America's Choice (I think) plan. Even with an unlocked phone (which happens to be one Cingular offered locked), I wasn't able to get those functions even when I changed the settings you're referring to.

Maybe I'll bite the bullet and get a new plan if they ever offer the Nokia N95.

I just called, still $175 to cancel. I'm 14 months in to my 24 month contract. I have another number on the account that has been with them since 1999, when they were Bellsouth Mobile. It's funny but the last time I switched carriers was to get away from AT&T Wireless in 1999 and go to Bellsouth. Now, I'm switching away from them as I have noticed a lot more dropped calls/reception issues since the merge. Oh well, 10 months to go!!

@Kaiser-Machead: I've been on pre-pay for about 2 years now. I love it!

(uber-late responses are still the cool thing to do right?)

Do not hold your breath waiting for AT&T (nee Cingular) to prorate early termination fees. Just lost my cell phone and found out from Customer Relations Department rep that this policy only applies to service agreements initiated starting 2008 and not to existing contracts. I took a quick look at the service agreement terms now posted on AT&T Wireless's website and guess what? The verbiage makes no mention of prorated cancellation fees. Hmmmmmm.