Yes, You’re Probably Paying More for Phone Service. Here’s Where Your Money Is Going

Everything is getting more expensive bit by bit, and it's not just gas or grocery prices. T-Mobile just increased the price of a pair of fees that get added on top of what customers pay for their mobile phone plans , and it's not the only carrier doing this.

Over the past year and a half, the big three US cellular providers have raised prices in small ways that may not seem consequential month to month, but add up over the year.

For a while, a lot of carriers' plans rolled taxes and fees into them as a competitive advantage — when you know you're paying a fixed amount each month, it's easier to budget. Unfortunately, those days are over, at least among the big three US carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

The new fee increases are so small that you probably won't notice them on your bill. Effective Oct. 12, T-Mobile's Regulatory Programs and Telco Recovery fees increased for every line on a customer's account. For voice lines, it's an increase of $1.00 for the combined fees (previously $4.49 a month, now $5.49 a month). Mobile internet lines, such as those for smartwatches or tablets, went up $0.50, from $2.10 to $2.60 a month.

T-Mobile previously raised the cost of these fees in April 2025, from $3.49 to $3.99 and $1.40 to $1.60, so in a year and a half, customers are paying $2 more per voice line and $1 more per mobile internet line per month.

Even if your plan has a multi-year price guarantee, that applies to the main plan itself, not miscellaneous taxes and fees that are added on top of the plan's cost. Carriers can, and do, increase those fairly regularly.

For Roger Entner, analyst and founder of Recon Analytics, the problem isn't that carriers regularly raise fees like this. It's that they spread out the increases.

"I don't understand why they [don't] only piss you off once a year, but instead sometimes choose to piss you off four times a year," Entner said in a conversation with CNET. "It doesn't make sense unless you want to be hated."

T-Mobile isn't the only one that's increased these fees. AT&T raised its Administrative and Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee from $3.99 to $4.99 per line in August; that was after a December 2025 increase from $3.49. Verizon raised its fees in August 2025, from $3.50 to $3.78 per month for voice lines and from $1.60 to $3.97 per month for data-only lines.

As for the prices of the plans themselves, they've been relatively consistent. The exception is Verizon, which announced holiday deals in December 2025 and carried the pricing all the way through August when it announced the Simplicity plan . The myPlan plans, which include Unlimited Welcome, Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Ultimate, now cost $10 more per line for new customers than they did at the beginning of 2026.