Last week we reported that AT&T was planning to launch a new pre-paid brand to compete with T-Mobile and other pay-as-you-go carriers, and it looks like it’s finally here.
AT&T just pulled back the curtain on its new pre-paid BYOD service provider that’s a subsidiary of AT&T called AIO Wireless. The new pre-paid nationwide service is launching in Houston, Tampa, and Orlando today but new markets should be opened up in the U.S. over the next year.
New plans on the carrier start at $40 a month with unlimited talk and text, and 250MB of data. $55 per month will buy you 2GB of data a month, while the $70 plan boosts you up to 7GB. The carrier will sell cheap feature phones for $30 all the way up to high quality smartphones like the refurbished iPhone 5 for $649.99.
If you’re looking for LTE coverage you’ll have to go elsewhere, as the company isn’t offering LTE at this time, even though it’s powered by AT&T’s network.
We heard last week that the new carrier was going to be called “All In One,” so it looks like “Aio” is a contraction of those initials. The creation of Aio is seen by many as a response to both T-Mobile’s new prepaid smartphone plans, as well as Verizon’s.
