Unlike other companies whose unused minutes, as a part of fixed monthly plans with peak minutes and weekend minutes, expire at the end of the month, AT&T phones actually allow a customer to carry over unused minutes to the subsequent month's total talk time, thus offering a significant saving on the overage charges. AT&T Rollover Minutes are exclusively available only with specific plans which have a rollover facility.

Obviously, the AT&T cell phones do not allow a customer to stockpile his unused minutes for eternity but for a comfortable 12 months, after which the minutes will expire indefinitely. The rollover minutes might also end if a customer switches over to a non-rollover plan or if the customer defaults on his regular bill payment.

It is possible for a user to migrate from one rollover plan to another but the number of minutes that a user has over the new plan's monthly anytime minutes will expire on migration. The rollover minutes really comes to the aid of a user who has an irregular talk time usage characteristics which oscillates between very low in one month and very high in another. Then, even if the current month's talk time is exhausted due to heavy usage, the rolled over minutes will come to the rescue. One can imagine it to be a savings account of minutes which the user can dip into whenever he has a need.

These rollover plans are an extension of an ongoing strategy by mobile phone operators to capture the customer's attention and is a welcome change from the cut-throat price wars that all the operators were involved in.

AT&T Wireless is offering these rollover plans on both local calling and national calling options. Making the rollover a part of the AT&T phone preferred nation plan is considered by many in telecom circles as a smart move by AT&T to differentiate itself in the eyes of a marketing-weary customer and offering a value proposition of peace of mind by taking care of a notional loss that the customer earlier suffered due to premature expiry of unused talk time.