Mobile fees and surcharges, decoded: Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T line by line.

Six ways your mobile bill creeps

Mobile bills creep through six mechanisms, most of which require no action from the subscriber. The first is promotional price expiry: the $45/line plan you signed up for 18 months ago has a 12-month promo that ended without notice, and the plan is now $65/line at the standard rate. The second is device financing after payoff: the $30/month device payment that ended last quarter was never removed, and the carrier is pocketing it as a silent margin increase until you notice and call.

The third mechanism is insurance auto-attach: when a new line is added or a device is upgraded, carrier insurance at $14-$17/month is often pre-checked and requires an opt-out. The fourth is add-on auto-renew: spam-shield premium, Visual Voicemail Plus, international calling add-ons, and mobile hotspot upgrades added for a specific trip often remain active indefinitely. The fifth is tax-rate drift: state telecom taxes and E911 fees change slightly each year, and the cumulative effect of small changes over three years can add $4-$8/month without any carrier involvement.

The sixth mechanism is the quietest: carrier surcharge increases that arrive with no notice. Verizon raised its Administrative and Telco Recovery Charge twice inside a year, from $3.30 to $3.50 per voice line in December 2024 and then to $3.78 in August 2025 (data-only lines jumped from $1.60 to $3.97 in the same August change). None of it required consent or appeared in a headline, and because it sits in the taxes-and-fees block it reads like a government charge rather than a Verizon pricing decision.

Verizon named fees (2026)

T-Mobile named fees (2026)

AT&T named fees (2026)

T-Mobile ended its tax-inclusive pricing

For more than seven years, T-Mobile's signature was tax-inclusive pricing: the advertised price was the price, with taxes and government fees baked in. It made budgeting simple and was a genuine edge in high-tax states like California, New York, and Illinois, where per-line telecom taxes and E911 fees can add $5-$10/month. On April 23, 2025, T-Mobile ended that for new plans. Its current Experience More and Experience Beyond plans add taxes and fees on top of the advertised price, the same way Verizon and AT&T do. Customers already on an older tax-inclusive plan are grandfathered, but the plans sold today are not all-in.

The practical effect is that the old shortcut, assume T-Mobile's sticker price is the final price, no longer holds. All three national carriers now layer a per-line surcharge (Verizon's $3.78 Admin and Telco Recovery, AT&T's $4.99 Administrative and Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee, T-Mobile's $4.49 Regulatory Programs and Telco Recovery Fee), the federal USF pass-through, E911, and state and local taxes on top of the plan price. To compare carriers honestly in 2026, price the after-tax total for the specific plan and number of lines you need in your own state; the advertised numbers are no longer directly comparable across carriers.

Cramming and unauthorised add-ons

Cramming is the addition of unauthorised third-party charges to a phone bill. The FCC defines it as any charge on a bill that the subscriber did not knowingly authorise. All major carriers must provide a process to dispute crammed charges, and the FCC maintains a complaint portal at fcc.gov/consumers/guides/cramming-unauthorized-charges-your-phone-bill. To prevent future cramming, call your carrier and request a third-party billing block. Verizon calls it a Block Third-Party Purchases; AT&T and T-Mobile have similar options.

Carrier-authorised add-ons (insurance, visual voicemail premium, spam-shield) are not cramming even if you do not remember adding them; they require a positive opt-in at some point in the account history, often during device upgrades. To audit these, log in to your carrier account and review Add-ons or Services, or call customer care and ask for a list of all recurring charges on your account, including anything added in the last 24 months.