AT&T’s “truly unlimited” prepaid plan has no hotspot, max speed of 3Mbps

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AT&T on Friday promised a "truly unlimited plan" for its prepaid phone customers, but the new offering limits video quality to standard definition, caps overall speeds at 3Mbps, and prohibits mobile hotspot use.

For $60 a month, GoPhone (AT&T's prepaid brand) now offers a plan without traditional data caps and overage charges. "We're excited to offer a truly unlimited plan for our AT&T GoPhone customers," AT&T VP Bob Bickerstaff said in the announcement. But the plan is always limited to an overall speed of 3Mbps, and video is limited to 1.5Mbps (about 480p), AT&T said. The cost is $65 a month for customers who don't sign up for automatic payments.

The plan is basically identical to one AT&T recently introduced for postpaid customers. But while this is the only unlimited option for AT&T prepaid customers, AT&T's postpaid customers have the option of paying $90 a month for an unlimited plan without the 3Mbps speed limit. The $90 postpaid plan also includes 10GB of high-speed tethering data a month and lets customers enable HD video.

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