AT&T has announced that it will begin to allow all Apple, Blackberry and Samsung customers with LTE smart-devices use video chat services via its cellular network. This includes FaceTime, BBM video and ChatOn. This announcement will affect all AT&T LTE plans, including shared, tiered and even grandfathered unlimited data plans. We should see these changes take place in mid-June. LTE-less users or people who aren’t using Apple, BlackBerry or Samsung devices will be able to take advantage of cellular video chat by year-end.
AT&T released the following statement to The Verge on the topic:
For video chat apps that come pre-loaded on devices, we currently give all OS and device makers the ability for those apps to work over cellular for our customers who are on Mobile Share or Tiered plans. Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry have chosen to enable this for their pre-loaded video chat apps. And by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from those three manufacturers.
The popular American mobile carrier has been under fire with customers as well as the FCC over the past few years. This is due to restricting FaceTime-over-Cellular functionality to its expensive Mobile Share plans. Though the company eventually opened this functionality up to its tiered users, users of the classic unlimited data plan have continued to be left out until now.
Better late than never, I guess.
Image Source: Thomas van de Weerd
