Savings on tap for some AT&T customers

AT&T announced today that it will allow some of its wireless customers to make calls to its wireline customers free of charge.

AT&T is moving quickly to offer its wireless and wireline customers benefits that are unique to a company that offers and owns both types of services. The carrier recently closed its acquisition of BellSouth, giving AT&T full ownership of Cingular Wireless. In a move expected by industry watchers, AT&T dropped the Cingular name for its well-entrenched AT&T brand earlier this week.

The new plan, called AT&T Unity, lets AT&T wireless customers make calls to landline AT&T customers in 22 states without incurring any additional charges. In addition, customers are able to reserve their minutes of use for making calls to numbers on other providers’ networks.

While most wireless service providers offer free calling between wireless subscribers on their networks, none have offered free calls to landline numbers on a large scale.

Verizon is offering a similar plan, which it calls Complete Freedom, to customers in Florida and Texas where Verizon’s local services overlap with Verizon Wireless’ coverage area. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone.

While AT&T is the first to offer such a plan to customers in all of its markets, it is only available to customers that also subscribe to AT&T’s local and long distance landline services.

AT&T will price the Unity plan starting at $59.95, per month, for 900 anytime minutes and unlimited minutes for nights and weekends. Customers also have to pay additional fees for their landline services.