AT&T is killing off their with Address Book service very soon

AT&T quietly announced that it’s killing off AT&T Address Book in January. We hadn’t heard much on the news, but was tipped us off with the above screenshot.

Indeed, AT&T’s site confirms that AT&T will end the address book backup service, which came preinstalled on phones, in January. AT&T says the actual stop date will vary by each customer, but that each one will receive a text message with the retirement date.

Here’s what AT&T says about the changes:

• When your AT&T Address Book account is closed:
• The contacts on your phone will remain on your phone.
• The contacts in your AT&T Address Book account will be deleted and back up syncing will stop.
• You’ll no longer be able to access your stored contacts in your account and the contacts stored in your account will be deleted. If you want to keep your stored contacts, follow the instructions below to export them to your computer.
• You’ll no longer be able to use the AT&T Address Book service to restore contacts to your phone if you upgrade or lose your device.

As a last ditch effort, AT&T recommends backing up your Address Book to your computer by visiting your AT&T Address Book account online, tapping Address Book, clicking Settings and then Exporting them.
This isn’t a big deal.

I may be wrong, but my guess is that AT&T is killing this because people don’t back up their address books in this fashion anymore. In other words, Address Book probably doesn’t have a whole lot of users. Thanks to iCloud and Android backup services, there are other ways to keep your contacts safe. Or there’s always the tried-and-true method of storing them to your SIM card.