Includes iPad ($30/unlimited option is no longer available to iPad customers after June 7). Current $30/unlimited customers are grandfathered in, for now, at least.
Where to begin? Canceling the $30/unlimited option barely a month after the iPad 3G shipped is deceptive, at best. Adding a 2GB cap to the top-tier iPhone/iPad data plan while only dropping the price by $5 doesn't seem like a good deal to me. I accept the need for caps, but I'd rather pay the extra $5 and get 5GB a la Verizon. The $15/200MB plan is comparable to what I paid Telstra in Australia, which I thought was a horrible deal, but at least it was contract-free!
If they'd accompanied these new data plans with similar price and usage reductions on the voice side, I'd be less upset, maybe even pleased. But given that the voice plans for the iPhone are still Cadillac- and Escalade-sized, when I only want a Vespa, AT&T is clearly out of step with my needs. FOAD.
How do you think I feel? I ordered the 'small' iPad days ago expecting to pay the $30/month and utilize the cloud for data storing and now since it hasn't arrive yet I'll be screwed into paying slightly less for a lot less data and there goes my plan to store my media online. Awesome, fuck you AT&T.
But given that the voice plans for the iPhone are still Cadillac- and Escalade-sized, when I only want a Vespa, AT&T is clearly out of step with my needs.
On the bright side, a half-price data plan is a step in the right direction. The light email and Google Maps user finally has an appropriate plan as of today; perhaps the heavy data user and occasional caller will be the next addressed.
This seems like an obvious sign to me that iPhone 4 will not be AT&T exclusive. The June 7th timing makes it pretty obvious that AT&T is trying to pull in as many subscribers as possible before the news breaks.
Either that or the next generation of the phone will come with functionality that will be very data intensive. I don't know that they're going to woo too many people with the threat of a rate increase.
I've found access to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and other US-only stuff more than makes up for it. It's a shame these offerings aren't available worldwide. Boo.
I am on Rogers, but right now I am on a Taiwan service that offers 30$/month for 3g and basic cell service. Free tethering and truly unlimited service. I am probably averaging a gig per day of usage and get about 100kb/sec. Skype works extremely smoothly.
Yes, but Taiwan is an island only somewhat larger than the state of Maryland, so telecoms have less area to cover compared to telecoms in the US.
And yes, tethering has been here since 3.0, and unlimited, but remember that the average Taiwanese salary is about 1/3 of what an American might make. Would you consider a 90$ unlimited and tethered AT&T monthly plan to be a good deal?
Still, not properly handling the two major cities where the phones are used the most is ridiculous.
Density seems to be a challenge, not a solution, for AT&T in those prime markets.
I can't imagine providing 3G coverage in Taipei or Kaohsiung is any different than providing it in NYC or SF. Lots of heavy users here too.
Sure it is much harder to provide 3G across Canada - but the providers don't have coverage in most of Canada. Even semi-rural areas in Southern Ontario an hour from Toronto have little service.
Just for comparison: in Finland unlimited / max speed 3G costs about 14 € per month (roughly equals $20). Tethering is allowed. We have population density of 16/km2 (32/km2 in the States). I wonder what is the sweet spot of population density for the cheapest possible 3G network? (Edit: the average density is probably pretty meaningless number in this context.)
So I'm grandfathered in. What happens when I upgrade to the next iPhone? 2GB is a damn joke. I hate that tethering is a hardware capability that I rent from them - not willing to do that.
They said you can go to a new smart phone and keep the old data plan. If you change the data plan to a newer data plan, you can't go back to unlimited.
I'd like to see iPad 3G owners sue ATT and/or Apple as a class. I definitely would have gone wifi vs. 3G if these rate plans had been disclosed at time of sale.
I wonder how much Google pays ATT to keep Android in the race, by crippling the iphone/ipad.
Well that's fucked. Talk about a bait and switch for iPad 3G users. 2Gb is a joke.
What's also interesting is it's starting June 7, the same day as WWDC. I guess that means the next iphone is dropping that day. I can't see how the new iphone will be on multiple carriers, because I think any other carrier would win by offering an unlimited (or at least more attractive) data plan. ATT (for now) knows that their network sucks and they have the upper hand, which is why they are able to get away with offering such shitty plans.
I'm all for cheaper plans and paying for what I use. But I still can't make a damn phone call on AT&T in SF. Dropping a call after getting through to my sister in the hospital or while phone sexing a lady friend brings about a rage inside me that I never knew existed.
My iPhone 3G contract is up any day now and theres no way I'll get another iPhone on AT&T without testing an android phone on another carrier.
Looking at the data usage trends on my AT&T online account, it seems like the most bandwidth I've used in a month is a little over 300MB. Granted, I don't have an iPhone (and I would probably consume more bandwidth if I had an iPhone or Android phone), but it seems like the 2GB is fairly reasonable.
Could anyone with an iPhone share their data usage statistics? I'm curious to see your usage.
I'm in France with SFR where the iPhone plans give you 1GB of 3G data, after which the connection is capped to GPRS speeds. I use my iPhone constantly (including listening to online radio for at least a few hours/week), and the most I've used so far in a single month is 934MB. I suspect that this move will mostly affect those who are using unofficial tethering and/or those who stream a lot of video from home.
I still think it's a pretty bad move on AT&T's fault, and is probably an indication that they have secured exclusivity in the US for at least another year.
I've used 2.9GB since August 2008. Half of that in the last 6 months, not sure why the spike there. My average for the last six months has been 250MB per month with a high of 383 (January, was moving and had no other internet service) and a low of 55 (April, surprised by that one). I expected my low would be March, worked in an office that month that completely banned the use of cell phones, anything with a wireless signal actually.
Since acquiring my 3GS I've sent 345MB and received 2.7GB of data over the 3G network. That works out to around 280MB/month, considering I've had the phone for a bit over 11 months.
I'm at 1.1GB sent, 5.6GB received since I got it around the same time. I attribute much of this to emailing photos to my flickr and tumblr accounts, as well as attaching images to tweets with twitpic
I have an iPhone and was surprised by the amount of data I use a month. Usage info for my account is not available prior to November 2009, but for the 7 months since, I've averaged 560 MB a month. Since the start of baseball season in April, I've streamed quite a bit of audio using MLB At-Bat. April saw the most data usage with 663 MB. I thought it would be much higher.
I'm disappointed with the 2 GB cap, but now that's I've seen my actual usage it seems more reasonable. My wife and I could save $10 a month and still stay comfortably under the cap.
I use about 500MB/month, and this didn't change much when I switched from an iPhone to a Nexus One. This is usage from two email accounts, a lot of web surfing, and maybe an hour or two of streaming music via rhapsody or pandora. This past month however I did enable tethering on my N1 and ended up using closer to about 1.2GB on my last bill.
I can see one benefit to the new price structure. My wife, who just uses her iPhone to look at maps and mail, only does maybe 100MB/month. If not for that she might want to switch to the iPhone 4G and who knows how data intensive it might be (may be worth it to stay grandfathered), we could save $15/month on by cutting back to the $15/200MB plan for her line. Even if she goes over that by 200MB we still would pay less than with the current data package.
I'm on the sidelines, not yet being ATT customer, but have * existing customers* received notification?
The "news" on ATT is TLDR, to figure out all parameters, but note that the Apple store (http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad) still shows old rates. Wonder what happens if I buy iPad from Apple when site gives old rate... what leverage would I have against rate increases. Anyone yet read details on the plan they signed up for - regarding changes?
So, I have a question. I thought that during the iPad release, Jobs said that the iPad was going to be an unlocked device, so it could be used on any network where you could get a mini-sim for it. Why haven't we seen this happen? If the device is unlocked, no Apple/ATT contract can prevent another provider from stepping up right? So why haven't they?
You can chop a T-mobile sim in half and use it with the iPad, though you'll be limited to EDGE 2g speeds.
edit- I believe T-mobile may also sell micro-sim cards. Shouldn't be necessary, though, as you can also get a micro-to-regular sized SIM adapter for your modified micro.
This is a great reason to sign up for the unlimited iPad plan now, and hold on to it; the micro-sim works in any device with the help of an adapter.
Why did tethering take a year to deliver on, whereas other carrier around the world were able to do it much quicker?
Also, I'm not quite sure I understand why it requires the 4.0 OS. I was under the impression that tethering is present in the 3.x OS as well. They could push a really minor update to change and enable this.
Some sort of AT&T's policy. To enable tethering, it used to be a single MobilConfig installation until Apple required them to be signed on 3.1.2, presumably to enforce AT&T's policy, which also result in tethering being unusable outside any "Apple-certified carriers" even in the unlocked countries.
While the 2gb might be ok for vast majority of the people, I am against this kind of plans on principle. Let's not forget this is AT&T and if they can introduce a transfer limitation, they can also modify the limitation at any time.
The previous plans were not unlimited--they were capped at 5GB, IIRC.
AT&T said that 98% of its customers will save money by switching to these plans. And, AT&T doesn't have the capacity to handle many people who would exceed these limits. AT&T will now send alerts directly to your phone when you get close to reaching the caps. I think this is a much better solution to the "worrying" problem than forcing everybody to over-pay for under-provisioned service.
> AT&T said that 98% of its customers will save money by switching to these plans.
When trying to overcome debt, many financial advisors recommend paying off the smallest debt first, even if it has relatively lower interest than other debts. This is because the psychological win of paying off an entire debt quickly has a much bigger impact upon the ability of people to stick with their payments, rather than the mathematically better path of paying down a higher-interest debt first.
So yes, people may be saving money. But that doesn't mean that it's necessarily better. I'd rather pay an extra $5/mo or whatever for the peace of mind.
> And, AT&T doesn't have the capacity to handle many people who would exceed these limits.
As a consumer, I don't care what AT&T has the capacity to do. They're supposed to figure out how to serve me and give me what I want. It's obviously possible, as they were doing it before, and other companies still have unlimited bandwidth plans. Innovate or die. But I guess I'm expecting too much out of the telecom industry...
The previous plans were not unlimited--they were capped at 5GB, IIRC.
That is reasonable. I think even your local internet cable connection has a max. 250GB transfer limit. Thing is, these are rarely enforced and present for worst case scenerios.
AT&T said that 98% of its customers will save money by switching to these plans.
I am more concerned about the future consequences. High bandwidth content over mobile is in its infancy right so usage is no where what it will be a few years from now. That is when AT&T will be making a killing because by then, use would go up and people would be used to this notion of paying by the GB.
I know this because I saw this in action in India. Initially, in the 90s, the ISPs had few gb limits. It didn't matter because all you used the net for was email. Then came broadband, napster, and torrents and guess what? The concept of buying by the GB carried over.
You can already do this now with a jailbroken iPhone and it's amazing. And jailbreaking an iphone now is probably the simplest hack a person can do. Seriously, now that I've gone jailbroken and have MyWi and the other app that fools apps into thinking they're on WiFi instead of 3G.
As I've said here several times, the unlimited mobile data simply will not last. It's actually more fair for everyone -- the many people who only use a small amount of data should pay less.
Ok, this is just stupid. Not the caps, the fact that paying for tethering doesn't increase your cap.
I thought the whole (customer-facing, anyway) point of charging for tethering was the greater bandwidth that the network expects to bear with a desktop-class device. Yet nearly doubling your data charges doesn't actually get you any more data, merely AT&T's blessing of how you use your allotted data.
AT&T is still trying to pretend it isn't just a dumb pipe for your data. I expect this to change eventually, but it might take a while since barriers to entry in to the mobile ISP market are pretty high.
4GB is a safe bet for best quality stream, but it depends on the encode. For iPad its scaled down. Assuming top encode rate is 1Mbps. 1Mbps * 7200 seconds = 7200 Mbit / 8 = 900 Mbytes
80 comments
[ 2318 ms ] story [ 337 ms ] threadWhere to begin? Canceling the $30/unlimited option barely a month after the iPad 3G shipped is deceptive, at best. Adding a 2GB cap to the top-tier iPhone/iPad data plan while only dropping the price by $5 doesn't seem like a good deal to me. I accept the need for caps, but I'd rather pay the extra $5 and get 5GB a la Verizon. The $15/200MB plan is comparable to what I paid Telstra in Australia, which I thought was a horrible deal, but at least it was contract-free!
If they'd accompanied these new data plans with similar price and usage reductions on the voice side, I'd be less upset, maybe even pleased. But given that the voice plans for the iPhone are still Cadillac- and Escalade-sized, when I only want a Vespa, AT&T is clearly out of step with my needs. FOAD.
On the bright side, a half-price data plan is a step in the right direction. The light email and Google Maps user finally has an appropriate plan as of today; perhaps the heavy data user and occasional caller will be the next addressed.
I believe it's going to have a front-facing camera, which would open the path to 2-way video calls.
And yes, tethering has been here since 3.0, and unlimited, but remember that the average Taiwanese salary is about 1/3 of what an American might make. Would you consider a 90$ unlimited and tethered AT&T monthly plan to be a good deal?
Still, not properly handling the two major cities where the phones are used the most is ridiculous.
Yet, even in areas that are just as dense, we still can't get good cell coverage (SF) or fast Internet.
I can't imagine providing 3G coverage in Taipei or Kaohsiung is any different than providing it in NYC or SF. Lots of heavy users here too.
Sure it is much harder to provide 3G across Canada - but the providers don't have coverage in most of Canada. Even semi-rural areas in Southern Ontario an hour from Toronto have little service.
I wonder how much Google pays ATT to keep Android in the race, by crippling the iphone/ipad.
AT&T screws over Google too: http://blogs.computerworld.com/15715/at_ts_backflip_android_... .
Second part: tinfoil hat or joke?
What's also interesting is it's starting June 7, the same day as WWDC. I guess that means the next iphone is dropping that day. I can't see how the new iphone will be on multiple carriers, because I think any other carrier would win by offering an unlimited (or at least more attractive) data plan. ATT (for now) knows that their network sucks and they have the upper hand, which is why they are able to get away with offering such shitty plans.
Next week is the new iPhone. I think this unilateral pricing change indicates a new USmcarrier is coming on board.
I am in Canada on Fido. The competition between carriers is a good thing up here. I pay $30 for 6GB data plan.
My iPhone 3G contract is up any day now and theres no way I'll get another iPhone on AT&T without testing an android phone on another carrier.
Thank goodness for caller ID. ;)
Could anyone with an iPhone share their data usage statistics? I'm curious to see your usage.
I still think it's a pretty bad move on AT&T's fault, and is probably an indication that they have secured exclusivity in the US for at least another year.
I'm disappointed with the 2 GB cap, but now that's I've seen my actual usage it seems more reasonable. My wife and I could save $10 a month and still stay comfortably under the cap.
I can see one benefit to the new price structure. My wife, who just uses her iPhone to look at maps and mail, only does maybe 100MB/month. If not for that she might want to switch to the iPhone 4G and who knows how data intensive it might be (may be worth it to stay grandfathered), we could save $15/month on by cutting back to the $15/200MB plan for her line. Even if she goes over that by 200MB we still would pay less than with the current data package.
I attribute the falloff in May to my adoption of Opera Mini over Safari.
* iPhone 3G (7/11/08 to 6/23/09; 347 days) - 1.9 GB (5.48 MB/day)
* iPhone 3GS (6/23/09 to present; 343 days) - 2.8 GB (8.16 MB/day)
For reference, 200 MB/month is ~6.5 MB/day and 2 GB/month is ~65 MB/day.
The "news" on ATT is TLDR, to figure out all parameters, but note that the Apple store (http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/family/ipad) still shows old rates. Wonder what happens if I buy iPad from Apple when site gives old rate... what leverage would I have against rate increases. Anyone yet read details on the plan they signed up for - regarding changes?
edit- I believe T-mobile may also sell micro-sim cards. Shouldn't be necessary, though, as you can also get a micro-to-regular sized SIM adapter for your modified micro.
This is a great reason to sign up for the unlimited iPad plan now, and hold on to it; the micro-sim works in any device with the help of an adapter.
Also, I'm not quite sure I understand why it requires the 4.0 OS. I was under the impression that tethering is present in the 3.x OS as well. They could push a really minor update to change and enable this.
Under an unlimited plan, bandwidth feels like it's free, because there's no cap. With caps, I'll _constantly_ worry about how much data I'm using.
Now I feel glad I went with Android... new OS update just straight up gives me tethering, and T-Mobile's still got unlimited data plans.
AT&T said that 98% of its customers will save money by switching to these plans. And, AT&T doesn't have the capacity to handle many people who would exceed these limits. AT&T will now send alerts directly to your phone when you get close to reaching the caps. I think this is a much better solution to the "worrying" problem than forcing everybody to over-pay for under-provisioned service.
When trying to overcome debt, many financial advisors recommend paying off the smallest debt first, even if it has relatively lower interest than other debts. This is because the psychological win of paying off an entire debt quickly has a much bigger impact upon the ability of people to stick with their payments, rather than the mathematically better path of paying down a higher-interest debt first.
So yes, people may be saving money. But that doesn't mean that it's necessarily better. I'd rather pay an extra $5/mo or whatever for the peace of mind.
> And, AT&T doesn't have the capacity to handle many people who would exceed these limits.
As a consumer, I don't care what AT&T has the capacity to do. They're supposed to figure out how to serve me and give me what I want. It's obviously possible, as they were doing it before, and other companies still have unlimited bandwidth plans. Innovate or die. But I guess I'm expecting too much out of the telecom industry...
Fortunately, these people also know that AT&T has competitors.
That is reasonable. I think even your local internet cable connection has a max. 250GB transfer limit. Thing is, these are rarely enforced and present for worst case scenerios.
AT&T said that 98% of its customers will save money by switching to these plans.
I am more concerned about the future consequences. High bandwidth content over mobile is in its infancy right so usage is no where what it will be a few years from now. That is when AT&T will be making a killing because by then, use would go up and people would be used to this notion of paying by the GB.
I know this because I saw this in action in India. Initially, in the 90s, the ISPs had few gb limits. It didn't matter because all you used the net for was email. Then came broadband, napster, and torrents and guess what? The concept of buying by the GB carried over.
I also wish all those upset about this class action status so I will get a $2.50 coupon...
jailbroken iPhone + iPad = amazing
I thought the whole (customer-facing, anyway) point of charging for tethering was the greater bandwidth that the network expects to bear with a desktop-class device. Yet nearly doubling your data charges doesn't actually get you any more data, merely AT&T's blessing of how you use your allotted data.
So even if you wanted to switch to a lower plan you can't b/c you have no idea how much voice/data/texts you are using.