Your phone bill is approaching $1500 annually? What are your parameters? Unless that’s unlimited data lines for a family with lots of added devices, that’s a ton of money.
AT&T 4 lines (2 adults 2 kids) x $40 each + taxes = ~$200 per month, $2400 per year. This is unlimited data, text, minutes - we used to have a data cap, but the worry about the kids exceeding it when out and about was not worth the savings. We could probably ditch the unlimited minutes for at least the kids lines. We also sometimes have an upgraded phone on the bill at 0% interest over 24 months - there is generally a pretty significant discount compared to the device vendor, with the downside that AT&T does lock the device to its network for those 24 months (unless you pay off the discount you got).
It’s really not that huge a jump. For a single phone line with tethering, ATT will run you $1200 annually. My budget provider with deprioritized service but on a similar plan is $540. A Prime membership covers a household, but anyway you measure it, $150 is close enough to “one order of magnitude less” to be useful as an approximation.
I seem to remember there not being any fees the first time I signed up, which was over two years ago but they were there 18 months ago. I’m assuming they didn’t charge them at the start to make the price more attractive.