I'm going to bed now, so I'll just tell you why the elimination of the UDP is the best thing for the iPhone/iPad population at large:
The top 5% of the owners are using 90% of the data. It's slowing down the network for everyone else. Earlier tonight, someone posted a screencap of their monthly data usage and he had 5GB of downloaded data. 5GB. That's what you and I would use in a typical year.
Look at what AT&T did:
1. Raised the costs for the selfish over-users of data.
2. Lowered the costs for everyone else.
The complaints about AT&T's network speeds and connectivity are about to become a thing of the past. The jailbreakers and media-streamers are about to get what's coming to them. It's a glorious day.
BJ
Wow, I just even know where to begin.
First of all, AT&T is making a killing on data from all of these 95% customers you have pointed out that use less than average data. Why wouldn't AT&T put it back into their network at the pace, say, Spint, (a company in the red) has? This issue is not about the users, it's about AT&T.
The main point of this whole thing is that within 27 freaking days they redesigned the plan changing all of us so called power users reasons for buying the iPad in the first place. This again is not the Apple i knew in the past to allow this to happen without some sort of statement or alternate plan for users that were mislead.
This decision I firmly believe was known by Apple and AT&T alike when they announced their so called breakthrough plan. While I enjoy reading your enthusiasm, I also don't think it explains or corrects the main issue at hand.
ABC, Netflix and Pandora are the main culprits of my data usage. I also receive a bunch of Raw photos in email and transfer a ton of these documents via Air Sharing.
These applications are not allowed via 3G without jail breaking.