It is amazing that majority of people still don't understand for things like this that pricing is based on what people will actually use and not what is available.
With hotspot usage, the average user will use significantly more bandwidth, thus AT&T's costs will go up significantly. Thus they charge more money for it. It is pretty simple, but this concept has befuddled most people here forever and I am not sure why.
It never stops amazing me how people make assertions without obviousy having a clue of what their talking about.
Hold on, may be you work for AT&T ?
While I see no reason why there should be a substantial increase in bandwidth usage, even if there were it's clearly a scam.
The whole industry is a scam in the US anyway. even in Africa they have better service for less. Ok, you can go to Europe, and the service is infinitely superior and less expensive.
And how much data do we really use anyhow at the pathetic speeds of these 3G networks (well I am speaking for the NYC area, truly a scam how bad it is here) ?
We are paying very significant amounts for network's theoretical performance which in practice we never even get close to, if it works at all. Yet, we pay pay pay, but the service does not at all work work work !!!!
Please be serious, inform yourself.