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Obviously in response to iMessage. To hell with them.

I will cancel my text plan altogether once iOS5 comes out. Almost everyone I text is on an iPhone. All others will be discouraged from texting me.

Bingo. Same here. All the people i care about use iphones and are Apple users. Facetime and imessage baby. Everyone else can just call me until they get an iphone. :)
 
Less confusion. Isn't that the same reason why all of Apples stuff is so streamlined?




Question to all, how useful is iMessage when you are in an area of poor network signal?

You will be able to do imessage over wifi AND 3G. Steve jobs said so at the keynote. Watch it. Exciting stuff.
 
It is really the consumers here. They don't want to pay full price for phones and get to choose a plan. They want "cheap" phones and higher month bills. Costs lot more that way but that is the mentality of the population here, generally speaking.

Yep at this prevents me from getting a cheaper data plan and bringing my own phone, because now I have no real incentive to get a phone off contract, because my plan will be the same no matter what!

The messed up thing is, telcos will tell you that the price for a cell plan is high BECAUSE they are subsidizing your phone. Well what about if I dont want you to pay for a portion of my phone?

Telcos: Oh well thats different :rolleyes:
 
What you mean there is NO data cap? Bandwidth? Thats just bloody semantics mate!

Point is....before you could surf the web, watch videos or listen to pandora to your hearts content on your ipad under your "unlimited" data plan.....now you can't. For heavy users who travel alot....unlimited aint unlimited anymore. You gotta WATCH how much "bandwidth" youre using.....um....which kinda defeats the purpose of paying for unlimited does it not?

Calling it data or bandwidth is a moot point. Its a sly dirty trick ATT used as a reach around to take away what you supposedly paid for.

And mark my words....it will happen to this so called "unlimited" text plan too.
There isn't a data cap you can stream Pandora/Netflix/etc to your hearts content. What will happen is instead of getting 3G speeds you will get EDGE speeds after some amount of time.

You will be able to do imessage over wifi AND 3G. Steve jobs said so at the keynote. Watch it. Exciting stuff.

Does me no good on my ride to DC. Don't get me wrong, iMessage is nice, when you have a rock solid networkdata connection.
 
Why does texting cost a dime extra??

Seriously, people. Cell phones are a pain in the ass because of the exorbitant monthly prices. Great tech with crap monthly bills.
 
Well, that's dumb. I definitely am not convinced to get a texting plan now.

I mean, if I could get a cheap one that I didn't get much texting, maybe they'd convince me once my budget got bigger. But if they want me to pay for unlimited price, well there's apps and imessage for that.

If they want to compete with smartphones ability to avoid text message charges entirely, getting rid of the plans that let you get some text messages is really not the way to go (I mean I could see the convenience of just using my own phone number for texts but it's not worth the price of the unlimited plan).
 
There isn't a data cap you can stream Pandora/Netflix/etc to your hearts content. What will happen is instead of getting 3G speeds you will get EDGE speeds after some amount of time.



Does me no good on my ride to DC. Don't get me wrong, iMessage is nice, when you have a rock solid networkdata connection.

Wrong. People who pay for unlimited data but use more bandwidth will be CHARGED EXTRA. Bottom line....it ain't UNLIMITED anymore. Its false advertising. Just another rug being pulled out from the consumers feet.
 
Wrong. People who pay for unlimited data but use more bandwidth will be CHARGED EXTRA. Bottom line....it ain't UNLIMITED anymore. Its false advertising. Just another rug being pulled out from the consumers feet.

Link for proof?
 
I'm glad I have the $5 200 txt plan. I like having a small allotment for friends who wont have iMessage.
At the ala carte price of .20 per txt, 200 txts would cost $40!
 
August 21

Does the date August 21 have any significance related to announcement of new iPhone?

The Unlimited Data plan on AT&T for new subscribers was taken away a couple of days before pre-order date for iPhone4.

Comments?
 
Wow.

So they limit data because it costs them money, but they force you on unlimited texting because they essentially get it "for free". Texts are sent in update packets which the phone already sends to the tower, so it doesn't cost more in terms of signal. It does mean they need storage to hold it till your phone is on the network, but we are talking about 160 text characters per message meaning they can store around 6000 texts in 1GB of storage. So server and network usage after the tower are negligible.

Now with iMessage, Facebook messenger, Google Plus' Huddle, WhatsApp, Kik, and Google Voice it is really annoying to have to pay for unlimited when you may only get 100-200 texts a month from people who don't have a smartphone.

I really hope AT&T gets screwed over by the FCC with their T-Mobile merger because if they keep getting what they want why would they change?
 
If 1000 SMS cost 10$, 1 GB of SMS would cost over 70 000$. I wonder why people never questioned that.

The same reason why people don't wonder why their cell phone bill doesn't go down after they pay off the subsidy (for the phone they didn't pay full price for).
 
Can you still do this? I tried and was told that either I needed a play or would be charged per text. I can of course control text messages I send out, but not those who send to me because they just send it to my cell number.

You can do this, but you just can't block data on the iPhone since it is a requirement to have data. Just call them and ask for a text message block on whatever line you want it on.
 
Is this AT&T sticking it to Apple users for having iMessage in iOS 5 to use instead of text messages?
Conversely, it's Apple screwing the carrier out of one of their usual income streams. But no worries, soon it will be an all Apple world with NO choices.
 
If 1000 SMS cost 10$, 1 GB of SMS would cost over 70 000$. I wonder why people never questioned that.

My provider, Fido, charges 3 cents per KB for data overages and out-of-country roaming. If you do that math, that works out to $30.72 per megabyte, or $31,457 per GB. Better turn data roaming off when travelling!

The same reason why people don't wonder why their cell phone bill doesn't go down after they pay off the subsidy (for the phone they didn't pay full price for).

It was this realization that caused me to get off the fence about contracts. I was with my provider for years and proudly contract-free ("Hah! I can leave ANYTIME, unlike you suckers who complain about being stuck for another 16 months on your contracts") until I realized that I was still paying the same monthly fee, which has a phone subsidy built into it, but wasn't receiving any of the benefits.
 
That's not very consumer oriented. I send a bunch of texts but now I won't have any idea which ones are "free" via iMessage and which ones I pay for until the telco bill arrives.

Yes you will.

iMessage-Regular.jpg
 
Text messaging doesn't cost telcos any money? Really? If that's true, why don't you create your own Text Messaging company and pocket all those profits?

People forget that a text message service relies upon a network of servers that require hardware/software, network and storage capacity, power, floor space, and the cost to maintain/troubleshoot/upgrade such components (people). It ain't free. However, it is profitable....but hey, business is business.

It does not cost them anything. Text messaging is nearly pure profit. It runs on the stand by signal the phones use. The extra cost to the carriers is near zero. We are getting really ripped off on text messaging plans.
 
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