AT&T and Verizon quietly add surcharges to old unlimited plans

Certain Verizon and AT&T customers have good reasons to be annoyed this week.

As spotted by The Verge and CNET, the pair of major mobile carriers has started charging surprise fees on top of the regular monthly bill for people who subscribe to certain plans that the companies would most likely wish to phase out.

For example, Verizon's 5G Start plan (normally $70/mo) now has an additional $3 monthly charge on top of it. On the AT&T side, the Unlimited Elite plan ($85/mo) has a $2.50 surcharge on it.

The idea, of course, is to persuade those customers to migrate over to newer plans that fit AT&T and Verizon's business plans better.

As The Verge pointed out, for instance, Verizon has a newer $60/mo plan that comes with fewer perks than 5G Start (namely, not as much hotspot data), and the company would probably prefer that people use that one instead.

Such is life in the seemingly lawless land of mobile data.