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AT&T Simplifying Texting Plans, Enlisting Best Buy in Battle Against Verizon iPhone

"The memo goes on to note that AT&T is proud to have partnered with Apple over the last three and a half years on a ground-breaking device and that it continues to be on "great terms" with Apple. Finally, AT&T points to the fact that two-thirds of its iPhone users were already AT&T customers to begin with, and 80% of iPhone subscribers are on family or business plans, which make it more difficult to switch carriers."

AT&T : "So there you aint going to verizon.. BITCHES !! MUAHAHAHAHHAHA" :cool:

is it just me or does that sound like bragging ? :p
 
thomamon said:
In the three years I have had my iPhone, I have maybe used data two or three times at the same time. Losing that is no big deal.
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It's a big deal if you want to use your GPS while talking on a headset. For those of us that work from the road, it's a dealbreaker.
 
Laird Knox said:
US carriers are just awful. They keep pushing new networks and never build out last year's promises. While the various flavors of 4G are nice there really isn't all that wrong with the existing 3G networks.

I'm seeing speeds upwards of 5Mbps on 3G - just as good as my 4G service. If companies would stick with one standard until it was available across the country we would all benefit. Instead network expansion is driven by the marketing department.
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They aren't going to get rid of 3G, just like they didn't get rid of 2G.
 
It never ceases to amaze me how many people post "How could you live without simultaneous voice + data" and "Who needs simultaneous voice + data?" So many people today are so vain, they expect everyone to be just like them and heaven forbid be different.

Also, at what stage does the cost of texts become a ripoff, and how much is it of people just being spoiled?

<puts on flame retardant clothes>
 
The government should step in and enforce that mobile carriers have to treat ALL cellular data consumption equally. Since a text message uses about as much data as a millisecond of a voice call, texts would cost a negligible amount.

The reason that they currently charge so much for texts it that its part of the carriers overall price discrimination strategy. For budget conscious people, they can seek out carriers budget "alter egos" which might be the pay-as-you-go options branded as the same carrier or is often under a different brand. For example, for Verizon, you can go to walmart and get a plan that includes unlimited talk, text, and web on their network for $45/month under a branding called "Straight Talk". The only difference is that it doesn't come with a phone subsidy and it doesn't include real internet, just the gated off bs thats common on featurephones. In comparison, unlimited talk text and web on Verizon itself is $90/month, or twice as much.

Verizon competes in the market for working class customers with their Walmart "Straight Talk" offering while making sure that people who want androids and blackberries stay on the verizon brand and pay twice as much.

If we had a real free market, I don't think that companies would be able to get away with that. Each product would have to compete on its own merits.
 
$10 for 1,000? They gotta be kidding.

They should at least throw those of us who hate paying even $5 for 200 a bone and give 200 free a month, or something. I'm giving them $140/month for two iPhone lines... isn't that enough already? Adding insult to injury. Verizon is looking better for me.

(Yes, I know I'll be grandfathered in... but I think the $250+ I've spent for text messages over the past 4 years is insane as well).
 
bigwig said:
Actually, text message data is literally free to the carriers because their data is sent as part of the normal housekeeping traffic between phone and tower. That's why text messages are limited to 140 characters: they use a formerly unused portion of a housekeeping data packet.
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Well yes and no. Those towers and spectrum don't magically get bought and built. If people talk less and use the less expensive talking plans, the their voice bill may not be covering all the infrastructure needed for their texts. I'm not saying that the voice bill doesn't cover it (it may or may not), but texts are not necessarily free even though their marginal costs approaches free once all of the infrastructure is built and then maintained.
 
Charging for texts is outdated and absurd. First, because phones can do actual voice these days, and second because we have the Internet. I refuse to pay for a text plan, and I do almost no texting at all. It’s more often trendy than useful or fun.

Without a plan, a minimal text exchange costs $1.20! That’s crazy in the Internet age. Typically a minimal exchange is at least 3 messages: you ask/say something, I reply, and you acknowledge. Each of those 3 gives .40 cents to the carrier (without a plan): the sender pays .20 and the recipient pays .20. That comes to $1.20 to tell me you might be a little late if your hair won’t dry. (Or more. And then there’s MMS!)

But I still don’t want a plan. If I average fewer than 50 texts per month (say, 60 one month, 40 the next) then I’m better off with no plan than paying $10. That’s WAY more texts than circumstances (like meetings or loud clubs) demand in a month. Beyond those specific needs, sending a ton of texts is just because you like doing it instead of calling/emailing/whatever. Which is great, but since it’s optional, I can protest by not paying for it. I’ve got better things to do with $120 per year than participate in an outdated fad :)

And luckily my friends quickly learned to email, call, AIM, Skype, Jabber, Facebook or FaceTime me instead! (Actually, some of them don’t have smartphones, and AIM me using SMS... but that’s their business! No cost to me. I can even reply.)
 
Among the key talking points being highlighted by AT&T: network speed (memo claims 35% faster than Verizon on average nationally), ability to talk and surf simultaneously (memo claims one-third of customers use it daily), global network coverage, and Wi-Fi hotspots.
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Yeah, sure, if you’re willing to pay through the nose. :rolleyes:
 
Here is AT&T being jerks again, trying to get more money from people. That is not how you make people like you.
 
tuna said:
The government should step in and enforce that mobile carriers have to treat ALL cellular data consumption equally. Since a text message uses about as much data as a millisecond of a voice call, texts would cost a negligible amount.

The reason that they currently charge so much for texts it that its part of the carriers overall price discrimination strategy. For budget conscious people, they can seek out carriers budget "alter egos" which might be the pay-as-you-go options branded as the same carrier or is often under a different brand. For example, for Verizon, you can go to walmart and get a plan that includes unlimited talk, text, and web on their network for $45/month under a branding called "Straight Talk". The only difference is that it doesn't come with a phone subsidy and it doesn't include real internet, just the gated off bs thats common on featurephones. In comparison, unlimited talk text and web on Verizon itself is $90/month, or twice as much.

Verizon competes in the market for working class customers with their Walmart "Straight Talk" offering while making sure that people who want androids and blackberries stay on the verizon brand and pay twice as much.

If we had a real free market, I don't think that companies would be able to get away with that. Each product would have to compete on its own merits.
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Unfortunately free market [capitalism] died a long time ago. :(
 
Jcoz said:
Isn't everything data on thier end? I'm thinking these plans will be gone soon and there wont be minutes or sms or whatever. You pay for X MB/GB of data to use as you seen fit between calls/text/web....

Am I wrong and voice is not data on thier end?
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I'm not 100% positive about AT&T (I'm on Verizon), but I've always been under the impression that voice was treated differently from data, but I easily could be wrong. But my point is that text messages use an outrageously low amount of data transfer and the amount that carriers are charging feels completely unjustified for what it is costing them to offer the service (as bigwig says below, it costs them next to nothing to operate).
bigwig said:
Actually, text message data is literally free to the carriers because their data is sent as part of the normal housekeeping traffic between phone and tower. That's why text messages are limited to 140 characters: they use a formerly unused portion of a housekeeping data packet.
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Exactly, they could argue that it costs them a little here and there for operating the towers and allowing you to use that service, but nothing that would justify what they are charging now for texting plans. And I think texting is 160, twitter is 140.
 
guzhogi said:
It never ceases to amaze me how many people post "How could you live without simultaneous voice + data" and "Who needs simultaneous voice + data?" So many people today are so vain, they expect everyone to be just like them and heaven forbid be different.

Also, at what stage does the cost of texts become a ripoff, and how much is it of people just being spoiled?

<puts on flame retardant clothes>
Click to expand...

It's not about vanity. It's a useful feature to have - talking on a bluetooth headset and being able to refer back to an email. Or look up a nearby resturant if you're meeting someone. Or plotting a route on GPS.

T-Mobile can do it, AT&T can do it, I assume Sprint can too - so why not VZ? It's a deliberate "feature" of their network, not an oversight. Maybe it's to assure voice QoS but somehow I doubt it as voice and data are different channels.
 
tuna said:
The government should step in and enforce that mobile carriers have to treat ALL cellular data consumption equally. Since a text message uses about as much data as a millisecond of a voice call, texts would cost a negligible amount.

The reason that they currently charge so much for texts it that its part of the carriers overall price discrimination strategy. For budget conscious people, they can seek out carriers budget "alter egos" which might be the pay-as-you-go options branded as the same carrier or is often under a different brand. For example, for Verizon, you can go to walmart and get a plan that includes unlimited talk, text, and web on their network for $45/month under a branding called "Straight Talk". The only difference is that it doesn't come with a phone subsidy and it doesn't include real internet, just the gated off bs thats common on featurephones. In comparison, unlimited talk text and web on Verizon itself is $90/month, or twice as much.

Verizon competes in the market for working class customers with their Walmart "Straight Talk" offering while making sure that people who want androids and blackberries stay on the verizon brand and pay twice as much.

If we had a real free market, I don't think that companies would be able to get away with that. Each product would have to compete on its own merits.
Click to expand...

"the government should step in" and "free market" don't go together, fyi...
 
$10 for 1000 texts. Hmmm....that's 1 cent per text for instant communication to anyone, to virtually anywhere on planet earth.

Not bad.
 
Richard1028 said:
Bingo.

This is the reason I just signed up with AT&T. In rural-arse America it still has the best coverage. 2G speeds though.

AT&T haters.... drop your accounts already!
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I guess it depends where in rural-arse America you are. My time is spent equally between California, and rural Colorado and Wisconsin, and over the last few years, I continually find that in CA AT&T is hit or miss, in CO it's pretty weak, and in WI it's non-existant. Curiously, all the completely dead areas for hours at a stretch, are all colored in bright bold orange on AT&T's coverage map.
 
philr5150 said:
It's not about vanity. It's a useful feature to have - talking on a bluetooth headset and being able to refer back to an email. Or look up a nearby resturant if you're meeting someone. Or plotting a route on GPS.
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Agreed. Mobile Internet—especially the kind where your connection isn’t lost when the phone rings!--is kind of like broadband: you really appreciate it once you use it a while.

ability to talk and surf simultaneously
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I despise AT&T’s customer service and support (their coverage/reliability is fine for me) but THAT is something I use constantly. I’m constantly putting someone on speaker so I can look up a menu, or hours, or directions, or movie details, or Google some info. “Let me call you back” is a thing of the past for me :)

I consider Verizon the lesser of two evils—there are no “good” carriers in my view—which means while I WOULD like to switch, losing simultaneous data isn’t worth it.
 
I'm in the progress of switching all of my SMS needs to my Google Voice number instead (with the help of a few jailbreak hacks to make it work more like native texting). Unfortunately, I have the occasional incoming text from someone that doesn't have my GV #, and I do rarely send an MMS.
 
WiiDSmoker said:
Unfortunately free market [capitalism] died a long time ago. :(
Click to expand...

It is as alive as ever and continues expanding

But whenever people hear "government regulation" they started screaming, yelling, and ranting about how the world is ending, etc....when the ACTUAL regulation is non-existent in the big picture or just irrelevant in general
 
guzhogi said:
It never ceases to amaze me how many people post "How could you live without simultaneous voice + data" and "Who needs simultaneous voice + data?" So many people today are so vain, they expect everyone to be just like them and heaven forbid be different.

Also, at what stage does the cost of texts become a ripoff, and how much is it of people just being spoiled?

<puts on flame retardant clothes>
Click to expand...

Haha I wasn't trying to be vain. Just trying to make people aware of a somewhat common scenario. I know I woulda been pissed if I switched to VZ and been on my way to an appointment, tried to answer a call and my GPS app closed down.
 
ten-oak-druid said:
The thing is that I want to be able to text. I got my iphone and decided to go without a text plan and monitor the number of text messages. Actually there are two phones on the plan. Through the holidays the number of texts per month was about equal in cost to what we would have paid for the plan. So I decided to stick without the plan. But now I've gotten two spam texts in one week and it is ridiculous that I have to pay for this. There should be a way to delete a text without opening it to avoid charge.
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Spam texts should be illegal and punishable under federal law.
 
geerlingguy said:
$10 for 1,000? They gotta be kidding.

They should at least throw those of us who hate paying even $5 for 200 a bone and give 200 free a month, or something. I'm giving them $140/month for two iPhone lines... isn't that enough already? Adding insult to injury. Verizon is looking better for me.
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You and others are obviously willing to pay a premium to own an iPhone. They build them fast enough for all of the people who are willing to pay these rates for data and text.
 
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