Upgrade with Next, new 2 year contract, or Straight Talk?

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@Rebekah17 wrote:

I have been with AT&T since 2005. My current 2 year contract ends today. The phone I am considering buying is the Note Edge. I am comparing the total cost over 2 years time with an upgrade using Next, 2 year contract, or switching to Straight Talk. I use between approximately 2.5-3.5 GB of data per month. Right now, I am on the Nation 450 plan with unlimited texts and 3GB of data. My bill every month, including taxes, is around $105 if I don't go over my data limit.

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Well, since you are on a tiered data plan now, you might be able to save a little money if you move to a Mobile Share plan.

For a 3GB data Mobile Share plan, you will pay $80/month ($40 for data & $40 for talk & text) plus taxes and the discounted phone cost with a new 2 year contract.  If you get the same with a NEXT agreement, you will pay $65/month ($40 for data + $25 for talk & text).  Depending upon the cost of the phone (on or off contract) both of these should be lower than the $105 you are currently paying., but which one is less also depends upon the cost of the phone.  For most customers, the contract subsidized phone is about $50 cheaper over the 2 years than using NEXT but you would need to look at the numbers yourself.

If I'm not mistaken, Straight talk would run you about $65/month for your unlimited talk & text and 2.5GB data, but I believe that you then get slower ("throttled") data as well, but you once again have to pay the full un-subsidized cost of the phone.  This comes to abouth the same price as the Mobile Sahre with a NEXT agreement, except you need to buy the phone up front, and you don't have the data overages, but you do get the throttled data speeds, and you need to rememebr to renew every month, not to mention that the rates/plans could change any month.  I probably wouldn't choose this option, but it might appeal to you.

The one nice thing about the Mobile Share plans is that you can elect to go with the 6GB plan for jsut $30/month more (about $110 plus taxes on contract, about $95 plus taxes plus phone on NEXT), so you get twice the data, and still pay similr to what you pay now.  If you routinely go over this might be a way to solve that problem, or a way to let you not worry as much about going over and use your phone the way you want.  Now if you had unlimited data, that would make things a little harder to compare, and if you used a lot more data, the 10/15GB Mobile Share plan would start to make more sense because you get a larger discount for buying under NEXT, so it would only cost you $115/month plus taxes & phone for the 10GB (current promotion to get 5GB additional for free) using NEXT.

I believe there is now a NEXT 30 (which is 36 months financing and allows you to upgrade after 30 months).  That would keep the monthly payment lower, but would mean you would be longer between upgrades without paying off the phone purchase agreement early.