Everything is slowly getting more expensive, and it’s not just gas or grocery prices. T-Mobile just raised the price of some fees that are added on top of what customers pay for their cell phone plans, and it’s not the only carrier to do this.
Over the past year and a half, the big three US cellular providers have been raising prices in small ways that may not seem consequential from month to month, but add up over the course of the year.
More expensive fees, taxes and plans
For a while, many carrier plans have had taxes and fees rolled into them as a competitive advantage—when you know you’re paying a fixed amount each month, it’s easier to budget. Unfortunately, those days are over, at least among the big three US carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
The new fee increases are so small that you probably won’t notice them on your bill. Effective October 12, T-Mobile regulatory programs and telco recovery fees increased for each line on a customer’s account. For voice lines, there is a $1.00 increase in the combined fees (previously $4.49 a month, now $5.49 a month). Mobile internet lines, such as those for smartwatches or tablets, increased by $0.50, from $2.10 to $2.60 a month.
T-Mobile previously increased the cost of these fees in April 2025, from $3.49 to $3.99 and $1.40 to $1.60, so in a year and a half, customers will pay $2 more per voice line and $1 more per mobile Internet line per month.
Even if your plan has a multi-year price guarantee, that applies to the main plan itself, not various taxes and fees that are added on top of the cost of the plan. Carriers can, and do, raise those fairly regularly.
For Roger Entner, analyst and founder of Recon Analytics, the problem isn’t that carriers regularly raise fees like this. It is that they distribute the increases.
“I don’t understand why them [don’t] to piss you off just once a year, but instead choose to piss you off four times a year,” said Entner in a conversation with CNET. “It doesn’t make sense unless you want to be hated.”
T-Mobile isn’t the only one to raise these fees. AT&T increased its administrative and regulatory recovery fees from $3.99 to $4.99 per line in August; that was after a December 2025 increase of $3.49. Verizon increased its fees in August 2025, from $3.50 to $3.78 per month for voice lines and from $1.60 to $3.97 per month for data-only lines.
As for the prices of the plans themselves, they were relatively consistent. The exception is Verizon, who announced holiday deals in December 2025 and carried the prices all the way through August when they announced the Simplicity plan. The myPlan plans, which include Unlimited Welcome, Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Ultimate, now cost $10 more per line for new customers than they did at the start of 2026.
Are these costs enough to inspire customers to look elsewhere? “We did research on what makes people tick [switch carriers]” said Entner. “Five dollars and under doesn’t matter. People pull it off. … Where the equipment [would be] is when your price goes up by $15, $20, and no one does.
Retirement legacy plans
When AT&T revamped its unlimited phone plan lineup in March of this year. It also announced that prices for many of its “retired” plans will increase, as much as $20 for an account (not per line). Then, in August, the increases were applied to more legacy plans, which included those that had replaced the new 2.0 plans just a few months earlier.
At the time, an AT&T spokesman said: “This increase reflects the real cost of continuing to deliver speed, reliability and support to our customers every day.” I think it’s also safe to say that this kind of increase can also serve as an incentive for customers to migrate to the current plans.
AT&T’s mobile app.
Jeff Carlson/CNET
In June, however, T-Mobile announced it would unilaterally move some customers to new plans to get their old ones off the books. Although T-Mobile said most plans are comparable to what customers were paying before, in some cases that means increases of up to $6 per line per month.
The new plans were variations on T-Mobile’s existing lineup, such as Experience More with Appreciation Savings versus the immediate increase that comes with switching to the Experience More plan.
The move was not optional, and at least one customer filed an informal complaint with the FCC. That’s one step below a formal complaint, which involves attorneys’ fees.
Price guarantees have almost evaporated
In April of last year, Verizon made a big deal to offer a three-year price guarantee on all of its plans. However, the warranty dropped in August when the company introduced its Simplicity plan. T-Mobile one-upped Verizon with a five-year price guarantee on its plans, which is now only available on Experience Beyond 2.0 and Experience More 2.0 plans.
People who signed up for plans under these terms still enjoy the price protection, but customers who jump to a new carrier now won’t necessarily get the same deal.
For existing customers, price guarantees can also act like handcuffs. If they want to move to another Verizon plan, for example, they have to give up that price stability.
Looking at the bigger picture, however, wireless service has gotten cheaper
While researching for this article, I came across one written by Entner for LightReading that takes a longer-term view of wireless pricing. It highlights that we actually pay less for phone service now than we used to. In “Inflation Mostly Skipped the Wireless Bill,” Entner uses industry and government data to show that wireless service has gotten cheaper since 2007 (the year the iPhone was released).
“The dollars you spend, yes, it’s going up,” Entner said in our conversation. “If we share it as part of your wallet, [the] Percentage of your monthly disposable income decreases.
How can you save money on your phone bill?
A few dollars in fees here and there doesn’t sound like much, but if you have, for example, four lines on one account, that’s an extra $8 per month that you weren’t paying before. And for people looking for the most economical plan, it’s a bigger percentage of their phone bills.
So what options are there to offset the increases or reduce your monthly expenses?
One option is to shop for a prepaid plan. Companies like Cricket, Mint Mobile and Visible run on the carrier’s networks and can cost less, especially if you’re currently paying for benefits like streaming services or hotspot data you don’t use. (All three are actually owned by the big three: Cricket is AT&T, Mint Mobile is T-Mobile and Visible is Verizon). Another option is US Mobile, which allows you to choose which network is strongest in your area.
A single line on T-Mobile’s Essential Saver 2.0 plan, for example, costs $50 and includes 50 GB of high-speed data. Mint Mobile’s 12-month Unlimited plan works out to $30 per month if you prepay $360 for the entire term, and it also includes high-speed data that can be slowed down after you use 50GB. It also includes up to 20GB of mobile hotspot usage.
While it’s a big one-time lift, paying for a full year in advance for a plan like this means you don’t have to wonder how much next month’s bill will be.
You may not be in a position to switch providers, especially if you have a phone financed by your current carrier. But you might be able to drop back to a less expensive plan with fewer features.
Verizon’s Simplicity plan at $45 per month, for example, is $20 less expensive than its Unlimited Welcome myPlan for a single line. (Verizon touts the $30 a month price, but that’s only for new customers who bring their own phone with them.) And simplicity actually gives you better performance, because you can connect to the faster 5G Ultra Wideband (or 5GUW) if your phone has the hardware for it; Unlimited welcome is limited to regular 5G speed.
But Simplicity has an important catch: If you have a multi-line Verizon plan and one person switches to Simplicity, every other line must also switch to it. For a family of four, that means paying $180 per month (at the $45 rate), which is $10 more expensive than the Unlimited Plus myPlan and includes less high-speed mobile hotspot data.
As another example, AT&T’s modular Build-A plan costs as little as $15 a month if you bring your own unlocked AT&T-compatible and eSIM-capable phone. That gives you just 1GB of data – and that’s it, but you can add more data and hotspot capability for an additional fee.
Then there is the free option. If you don’t mind ads and the restriction of using a single app for all your communications, TextNow gives you calls, text messages and data for email, maps, ride-sharing and finance apps. Unlimited data and calling plans can be purchased for the day ($3), week ($9) or month ($36).
If you are thinking of switching providers, remember that each has limited programs for you to test the speed and coverage in your area. T-Mobile offers a free three-month Network Pass, Verizon has a 30-day “trial” program and AT&T has its own 30-day eSIM free trial program.
It’s never fun to find the bill for your wireless phone service—an expense that feels like a modern necessity—is piling up. But there are many alternative options that can save you money if you know where to look.
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