It goes without saying that many are excited to see what kind of changes and improvements 5G could be bringing to the table. As it stands, LTE is pretty fast, but tests have shown that 5G is faster. Unfortunately, it also seems that 5G plans could potentially be more expensive, or at least that’s what AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson is anticipating.During AT&T’s earnings call, Stephenson said that he anticipates that there is a chance 5G mobile plans could more closely resemble broadband internet plans versus current LTE plans. For example, with LTE plans, it is priced based on how much data you need, but other than that, a customer on a 1GB data plan versus a customer on a 50GB data plan will experience the same speeds.
However, with 5G, Stephenson said, “I will be very surprised if, as we move into wireless, the pricing regime in wireless doesn’t look something like the pricing regime you see in fixed line. If you can offer a gig speed, there are some customers that are willing to pay a premium for 500 meg to a gig speed, and so forth. So I expect that to be the case. We’re two to three years away from seeing that play out.”
This isn’t to say that this is how AT&T plans to price their 5G plans, but if Stephenson’s comments are anything to go by, it looks like adopting 5G won’t come cheap.