AT&T customers might start noticing that their monthly bills just got a little bit more expensive.
In a move to raise some more cash after spending $85.4 billion to buy Time Warner, AT&T has increased the price of its customer service fees. The increase itself is pretty small, but when applied to AT&T’s entire customer base, it could help the telecommunications carrier bring in an extra $800 million in revenue this year.
Customer’s started seeing the price hikes in April. Two price increases have occurred in the last three months. First, it increased by 50 cents, then added another 73 cents to bills in June. AT&T customers are now paying $1.23 cents extra in administrative fees.
The price hike only applies to postpaid phone lines, which make up about 85% of the company’s customer base. Prepaid customers won’t be hit with the extra fees.
AT&T is defending the price increase saying, “this is a standard administrative fee across the wireless industry, which helps cover costs we incur for items like cell site maintenance and interconnection between carriers.”
Even though other carriers do it too, the timing of the hike comes right as AT&T closed its deal on Time Warner. The Time Warner deal increased AT&T’s total debt to $60 billion. About $10 billion of that debt can now be financed with the extra fees.
