AT&T’s ‘Build-A-Plan’ Launches Tomorrow

WASHINGTON, May 26, 2026 – AT&T’s new customizable “Build-A-Plan” launches Wednesday. Starting at $15 per month for 1 gigabyte of data, it will allow new customers to choose to pay extra for more data on a month-to-month basis.

The baseline plan includes unlimited talk and text, with the customizable element being mobile and hotspot data. Customers can pay an extra $5 for a total of 5 GB of mobile data, $20 for unlimited data, or $35 for unlimited data and higher-definition streaming. Hotspot data goes up to 50 GB for an extra $20.

The idea, AT&T said in a release, is to give subscribers the ability to pick and choose what they’re paying for, ideally enticing customers that aren’t attached to extra perks.

Roger Entner , founder of Recon Analytics, said in a post on X that the move should be effective for targeting subscribers that only take a single line.

“This is a great plan for 1 line customers who want to have clear and transparent pricing. For too long postpaid 1 line prices made no sense,” he wrote. “Here you can have tailored plan starting at $15 that covers the basics”

Build-A-Plan customers will have to bring their own phone, which will also have to be unlocked and have an electronic SIM card. Unused monthly data won’t carry over.

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said on the carrier’s earnings call last month he was also interested in more specifically tailored plans.

He said he was eager to “microsegment” Verizon’s offers and ultimately make “customized propositions for every individual customer” while relying less on free phones as a means of attracting and retaining customers.

The cable giants have been adding more and more mobile subscribers in recent years, partly through bundled plans that AT&T said its Build-A-Plan was trying to compete with. AT&T also introduced its OneConnect plan last month, a simplified fixed and mobile broadband bundle that analysts said seemed crafted to compete with cable as well.

The major ISPs are bundling fixed and mobile broadband as a means of keeping customers around longer, although T-Mobile is less into the idea. Cable companies are also adding video services into the mix to entice customers and mitigate ongoing subscriber losses.

Peter Adderton , found of Verizon MVNO MobileX, noted on X that MVNOs like his have similar offerings to AT&T's with prepaid plans.

T-Life

T-Mobile employees on Reddit recently posted about an internal email from COO John Freier which said most retail transactions would be handled by the carrier’s T-Life app by October of this year, Android Authority reported Friday.

Phone Arena highlighted other posts in which employees worried about retail locations being closed as more customer interactions were moved online.

T-Mobile said the following in a statement to Broadband Breakfast: “We continue to see real momentum with T-Life. Customers consistently report higher satisfaction on T-Life transactions, and our frontline teams benefit from faster, simpler tools. As we continue to evolve our digital experience to meet customers where they are – in store, over the phone, or in T-Life – our frontline employees remain an essential part of how we show up for customers every day. And if for some reason a customer cannot access T-Life for any reason, no problem. Our experts will be equipped to support them outside of the app.”

AT&T is suing T-Mobile over its use of the app to switch new customers. AT&T originally alleged the app was improperly scraping account data as part of the process, but T-Mobile stopped the practice that spawned the lawsuit and a judge barred the company from resuming it.

AT&T submitted an amended complaint in February arguing T-Mobile was deceptively claiming the switching process would be faster than it was, among other things.

T-Mobile said in a March 16 answer that it developed its easy switching tool “to facilitate consumer choice and promote competition,” and that AT&T had not suffered any damages from its conduct.

AT&T CEO John Stankey said at a December UBS conference that T-Mobile actually had the right idea by offering a fully online switching process. He said AT&T planned to have something similar rolling out in 2026, but “we’re taking a little bit of a different attack as to how we’re doing it.”

Verizon’s Schulman is also all in on using artificial intelligence and making the company leaner, having laid off 13,000 employees last year.