AT&T Adding LTE/HSPA+, iPhone Support to GoPhone Prepaid Service

AT&T's prepaid GoPhone service and the iPhone have always had a complicated relationship -- mostly because the carrier limited its service to voice and text. But that's about to change at long last.

MacRumors reported Thursday that AT&T is about to expand its prepaid GoPhone service, which will now include support for the carrier's 4G LTE and HSPA+ network for the first tim ever.

Prepaid and no-contract services have been heating up over the last year or so, particularly now that so many of these carriers now support the iPhone. AT&T has been a curious omission since Apple debuted the handset in 2007, refusing to include cellular data access for that device with its GoPhone service.

That will apparently change for existing GoPhone customers starting June 21, with three service plans available for the iPhone, including a $65 per month package with unlimited voice and text plus 1GB of LTE-capable data. Cheaper $25 and $50 plans are also available, but require a separate data package purchase.

4G LTE via prepaid will be a welcome change, since most services such as Straight Talk are limited to slower data seeds. The report also claims official Visual Voicemail support will be part of the GoPhone package as well.

Although there has been no official announcement from AT&T, the new GoPhone expansion is expected to launch today, but existing customers will need to call the carrier in order to manually be upgraded prior to June 21.

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