AT&T offering roll over data starting January 25 with a catch

Sometimes it's easy to think back to the glory days of unlimited data on mobile plans and mourn the loss. Light a solitary candle to place in a window in memory of watching X-Files on your phone in the park for hours without overages. Those days are largely a thing of the past on the major carriers, but at least now we're seeing a trend of our mobile providers letting us hold onto the data we don't use in a month.

AT&T has announced a new plan, launching January 25, which will allow every subscriber with a Mobile Share Value plan to roll their leftover data each month into the next month. There are of course a few minor details. You cannot stockpile your data, meaning if you have an extra GB at the end of April you can only roll that data into May. You don't get to save it for your trip in June. It will simply disappear, unused.

For users who mainly use Wi-Fi at home this will be a boon for their data plans when they travel. Still the ability to only roll your data over for one month leaves the AT&T plan falling short of the one recently revealed by rival T-Mobile. T-Mobile's new plan allows you to roll over and stockpile your data for up to one year. If you want to save up for vacation time the T-Mobile plan is still better. Of course if you're under contract with AT&T this small gift is still a gift.