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AT&T Introduces New Smartphone Data Plans w/3GB and 5GB Options

AJH1993 said:
My work-issued iPhone dropped 5 calls today in downtown PDX.
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Dude, something is wrong.

My wife, daughter, nephew, and I all have iPhone 4. Live in Lloyd district, work and school downtown. I *never* have problems like what you describe and my download speeds with speediest are usually around 3000 except rare times they drop to 1000 at like a blazer+Winterhawks game or something.

I have noticed a problem when riding MAX a across the steel bridge, the tower hand-off or something right at thy spot is problematic.

Get the app "cell phone coverage" from RootMetrics and start running tests - they have a great site where you can see actual real world cell performance on Google maps. (My buddy and I have a ball going to holes in their map and running tests to fill in the gaps).

Seriously though - Downtown PDX is good to us with 4 iPhones...

Now - skiing on mt hood is a different deal... Coverage there is hit-or miss with AT&T... ;)
 
jeremyshaw said:
It IS a price increase. See how the 15usd plan will no longer exist for new users? So the base amount for ANY new smartphone will now be 20usd? Not 15usd.
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No. It's not a price increase. Charging $20/30 for the same 200MB/2GB plans would be a price increase.

It's taking away consumer options which I don't like (and as someone whose parents are considering their first smartphones, and would have been fine on the 200 MB plan, this doesn't make me happy) but to call it a price increase is false.


i-John said:
Simple answer... no.

New phone, new contract... new plan
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False. I've switched phone twice - new contract and all, and retained unlimited data.
 
i-John said:
This is why...

USA = 3.79 million square miles (9,826,675 sq km)
Sweden = 173,860 square miles (450,295 sq km)

They have to spend money to cover the areas in between, not just the population centers.

Also, in cities like San Francisco, it takes about 3 years of government red tape to put up one tower to provide better coverage.
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People who laugh at US cellphone service are always from Sweden... I feel like it must be amazing there.
 
I actually find AT&T service way better than Verizon in my area, which is Los Angeles in general. I ALWAYS have service except for some small deadzone for a block on San Vicente.
 
faroZ06 said:
People who laugh at US cellphone service are always from Sweden... I feel like it must be amazing there.
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Sweden and the USA have pretty similar population densities so cellular coverage comparisons are actually relevant, at least more so than with Japan or South Korea.

It's worth pointing out that Sweden had LTE long before the USA. There's little excuse for this. The technology was available to everyone around the same time. What is notable is that AT&T did not have winning bids on the 700MHz spectrum in the FCC auction, and waiting several years to buy this spectrum from Qualcomm. One interpretation would be a definite lack of commitment into securing their future.
 
yg17 said:
No. It's not a price increase. Charging $20/30 for the same 200MB/2GB plans would be a price increase.

It's taking away consumer options which I don't like (and as someone whose parents are considering their first smartphones, and would have been fine on the 200 MB plan, this doesn't make me happy) but to call it a price increase is false.




False. I've switched phone twice - new contract and all, and retained unlimited data.
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Read again. Where, after the 22nd, can a new user get a 15usd AT&T data plan addon for a smartphone? Where, after the 22nd, can a new tablet user get a 15usd AT&T data plan? The price has risen, no matter how it's read.
 
I have unlimited data since my original iPhone. Great, so what. I am a fairly heavy user, but I don't download tons of video or pics on my phone, and I use wifi at home at work, because it's faster of course. And my data hasn't broken 400MB ever in a month. So, am I going to downgrade, no. But am I concerned, no. Really, who is using 2GB+ per month. You'd have no battery life if you were using your phone that much. No life whatsoever, really.
 
roland.g said:
I have unlimited data since my original iPhone. Great, so what. I am a fairly heavy user, but I don't download tons of video or pics on my phone, and I use wifi at home at work, because it's faster of course. And my data hasn't broken 400MB ever in a month. So, am I going to downgrade, no. But am I concerned, no. Really, who is using 2GB+ per month. You'd have no battery life if you were using your phone that much. No life whatsoever, really.
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That's a shame. I know a few AT&T LTE users who can barely top 2GB regularly (since I am handling the finances of where I work, lol). Long commute home, plenty of Netflix. Prior to getting LTE phones, they barely reached 800MB a month, even if that.


Then again, it's better to generalize. Those no life software engineers.
 
cfedu said:
Telus has there own towers, videotron has there own towers, wind has there own towers, mobile city has there own towers, public mobile has there own towers, sasktell has there own towers etc.

Bell and telus do share some of there towers, and some pay as you go companies share the big 3's towers.
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Well if you are going to count every single carrier, then the US has a heck of a lot of them too, go to this page to see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers

But if you want to consider major, national providers, then Canada pretty much has two Big ones, Bell and Rogers. Videotron has a presence in Quebec, and Telus does have a presence in some markets, but in Telus' case they don't share Bell's towers for no reason. Overall, there are two major infrastructures. That might change in the future, I sure hope it does, but right now them be the facts.
 
so att is just piss and trolling because they didn't get to merge with tmobile. Really lame move if you ask me oh well in before someone like free in france will take over att bs.
 
JohnDoe98 said:
Well if you are going to count every single carrier, then the US has a heck of a lot of them too, go to this page to see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers

But if you want to consider major, national providers, then Canada pretty much has two Big ones, Bell and Rogers. Videotron has a presence in Quebec, and Telus does have a presence in some markets, but in Telus' case they don't share Bell's towers for no reason. Overall, there are two major infrastructures. That might change in the future, I sure hope it does, but right now them be the facts.
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You should subtract out the MVNO to get the true number of providers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers
 
i-John said:
This is why...

USA = 3.79 million square miles (9,826,675 sq km)
Sweden = 173,860 square miles (450,295 sq km)

They have to spend money to cover the areas in between, not just the population centers.

Also, in cities like San Francisco, it takes about 3 years of government red tape to put up one tower to provide better coverage.
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Your argument doesn't make much sense mate. Canada has more square miles than the US and a lower population density, so our plans should be more expensive, right? But,

ATT:
300 MB for $20 = $0.066/MB
3 GB for $30 = $0.009/MB

Canada:
500 MB for 20$ = $0.04/MB
5 GB for 35$ = 0.007/MB
 
At&t-parasites.

Just what we need in the middle of the worst butt-kicking the US economy has endured for more than 70 years. And now, because they need another bottle of 200 year old wine at their next corporate board meeting, they expect us to pay extra? BITE ME.

You'll NEVER get a single dime of my money -never a dime.
 
Yea the majority of people use under 2gb of data but more people use more then 2gb then the carriers are leading on to believe if att currently has about 100M subscribers 5M of them are using an excessive amount of data. I have two at&t smartphones and 5 total smart phones on my data plan. On my samsung skyrocket i average about 4.5 GB of data on LTE on an unlimited plan i've never been sent a text or anything about being part of the top 5% on my iPhone 4S with unlimited data as well i average about 6GB a month again with no notice ever of being top 5% of users or my data being tiered. My gf using 8GB on average on her iPhone 4S again with no notice of being throttled.


Judas1 said:
You are correct on their policy, but the vast majority of people fall under 2 GB. So you could very well be in the top 5% at 2 GB, which would mean you get throttled.
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problem is there is no competition b/c all the carriers are following iphone rules... whatever company starts selling the iphone they charge higher fees so they can pay apple. We saw it with sprint they paid apple 25mil for the right to sell the iphone them promptly cancelled services that saved users money. Only thing going for sprint now is unlimited Data but even that goes away when they ramp up their LTE. As reports state data usage has jumped b/c of i4s users i think its double or triple the i4...now when the i5 comes out with super processor and bigger screen and LTE that number will rise.

Sure you can save a little by getting an iphone on virgin mobile or something but your coverage won't be good.

Only hope I see is with google testing out their ability to operate as a carrier in spain currently. Google doesn't care about charging users they just want to advertise to them so a google-carrier will prob be extremely cheap with unlimited everything and likely ip based and using white space. Only issue with that it'll help Android users like myself and not iphone/wp7/blackberry users.

What this nation needs is carrier reform and to explain why mobile cost 2 or 3 times more than tablets and even some laptops a simple flip phone on verizon costs almost 500 dollars while some smartphone's cost upwards of 800 to 1000.

This nation also needs a carrier or carriers to say no to apple regarding the extortion apple demands to carry idevices, the industry follows apple so what they charge others charge then pass the costs onto the user b/c like ppl who buy ipad's and macbooks and imac the carriers are paying the apple tax ontop of other fees.

my next phone will be off contract with verizon, i'm buying it b4 I go off contract and it will be 4G so they can tell me what to use my upgrade on since it would have upgraded on my own.
 
This will end up being a price increase for me. I'm on the $15 plan during the school year, and $25/ month during the summer. If I bump myself up to the $30/month this summer, I will no longer be able to choose my current $15 plan.
 
SpaceKitty said:
I ported one of my AT&T lines to Verizon last week and it's actually about $$15 more than the unlimited plan I had with AT&T. Part of the increase was that I had to pay now $10 for 1000 SMS when I had 200 for $5 with AT&T.
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And if you were to switch back, you would find the only texting option on AT&T is unlimited, which is $20 a month (this does, however, upgrade you to unlimited cell to cell minutes)
 
NotAdvisable said:
What is this? In Australia you can get 1GB for $10 with our most expensive telco, or 3GB with unlimited texts and calls for $40 a month. Why is AT&T so expensive?
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Because American mobile operators suck. Note that other American cellular companies have similar deals.

That said, American telecommunications companies get very little government subsidies compared to their brethren in other countries. That means that American taxpayers aren't really paying for mobile telephony infrastructure via taxes. They are paying directly to their cellular companies.

If Aussies are paying less taxes than Americans and lower cellular bills, please let us know.
 
Netflix?BOA?

So i guess no one at AT&T bothered to check up with how well their rate increases went?
 
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