Both T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son want you to believe that you’re paying too much for your monthly wireless bills at AT&T and Verizon. AT&T mobile chief Ralph de la Vega, however, says you shouldn’t listen to them because you’re really getting a great deal with your monthly wireless service. Re/code reports de la Vega told the Rutberg Global Summit in Atlanta on Tuesday that the American wireless industry is very healthy and is delivering terrific value to consumers by offering the broadest LTE networks in the entire world.
De la Vega also pointed out that the price of delivering 1MB of LTE data has dropped by 93% over the past five years, although consumers have yet to see those reduced costs reflected in their monthly wireless bills. What’s more, despite the lower costs of delivering data over LTE, both AT&T and Verizon have implemented monthly data caps that will charge consumers hefty overage fees if they consume too much data while both Sprint and T-Mobile have continued to offer unlimited data plans.
A recent survey conducted by Cowen and Company found that AT&T subscribers pay an average of $141 a month for their wireless service, which actually makes it only the third most expensive carrier in the U.S. behind Verizon ($148 per month) and Sprint ($144 per month). In fact, T-Mobile is the only major carrier in the U.S. whose customers have significantly lower bills, as Cowen found T-Mobile subscribers pay an average of $120 a month.
