New AT&T subscribers will no longer get HBO Max (or any other video service)

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

One perk most wireless carriers offer is a free streaming video-on-demand subscription, but now AT&T won't be giving it to new customers, and hasn't replaced it with a different service either The carrier quietly discontinued its top-tier unlimited elite plan for new subscribers this week, and added a new one that doesn't include hbo max, as reported by Next TV.

The top plan costs $85 a month for a single line and is called unlimited premium. Premium subscribers get unlimited talk, text, and data, 4K video streaming, and no slowdowns if they use a lot of data, just like with the now-grandfathered Elite plan. You don't get a streaming video plan but you do get 50GB of mobile hotspot data.

According to a statement from AT&T to Next TV, "Hbo Max is a great service, but we constantly experiment with the features we offer to give them the best value."

AT&T doesn't feed binge watcher habits anymore, but it does offer subscription services for gaming. AT&T has been offering six months of Stadia Pro for more than a year and still does today, and it started offering six months of the service in January.

AT&T customers can play two cloud games via a web browser thanks to a partnership. Control was added to AT&T's streaming service last month, and Batman: Arkham Knight is still available until June 15th. It has teased larger plans for cloud gaming that might allow users to try a game before buying it.

Even with the games, it is hard to ignore the fact that AT&T was able to compete against other companies. It makes sense that the show is going away because AT&T no longer owns the show. When TimeWarner was still owned by the carrier, the free deal began in 2020. AT&T doesn't have to worry about increasing HBO Max's subscriber counts anymore because the new Warner Bros. Discovery owns HBO instead.