Maybe when they start selling the phone for the non commitment pricing 599/699? Who knows when that will be but that pricing is listed in their docs.
I've been following this saga for a while now, and without some
very convoluted steps, your only option will be the expensive no-commitment plan which until now has been vaporware.
I, like you, don't really feel the need for the data plan as 80% of the time I'm within wifi that I have access to, the other 20% time might be when I'm at a bar and a particular query strikes my fancy and I want to look up the answer right then and there. I currently have a RAZR and have never used it to surf the web because frankly, the phone's browser is a complete POS. So basically, I don't know what my needs are as far as data is concerned. I'm sure once I had a phone that browsing was pleasurable on, I would actually browse frequently. I guess I can afford the $30 extra for the data plan, but not living in a 3G network really makes me go from the "sucks, but it's worth it" category to the "this just plain sucks" category.
So basically, it goes down like this for me:
I keep my existing AT&T plan (been eligible for an upgrade for a while now), pay $599 for the no-commitment plan and life is good. If I do this, it would NOT be in my best interest to upgrade my data plan within the first 14 months of ownership ($400 price difference between subsidized price and unsubsidized price divided by $30) in the event that my data needs paid a la carte exceed $30 per month. My back of the napkin calculations show that AT&T charges $0.01 per k! That means I'd get 3000 kilobytes of traffic for $30 or roughly less than 3MB. Clearly that won't work.
So basically, even if you don't need unlimited 3G, it takes over half of the contract to recoup the cost of the phone alone. In that case, if you do get the no-commitment price, you're best off not using the thing for 3G data at all - call AT&T and tell them to block that traffic entirely. If you were to add data on to your plan after getting the unsubsidized price, you've just lost out on the subsidy.
In my situation (not living near 3G) the best thing would be to give options that weren't "unlimited" or perhaps offer the old EDGE-only plan. It's a little bit of a bitter pill to swallow that I already pay out the ass for a decent internet connection, and $40 for just voice - so to add a service that is already 3/4 of what I'm used to paying to AT&T with little perceived value I just have a hard time justifying... I just wish the data plan was either not required, or you more than one option.
