More Details on AT&T's Data Plan Changes for iPhone and iPad

As someone commented on another blog, our company too requires unlimited data plans of all its employees (who are being reimbursed) because it is saving us millions per year on people no longer going over a limit. Millions! Now that AT&T won't have an unlimited plan we will no longer be able to give AT&T any new customers. That means no iPhone for our employees, and AT&T will lose tens of thousands of possible customers. For personal use this is not a big deal to me, but for corporate use this is a hugely stupid move. I do not think we are the only company with this policy in place. We're not going to change the policy for their sake and end up going back to the wasted $ on overage charges.

All you individuals who think mostly of your own usage probably don't care, but AT&T will when they see corporations dropping like flies. This will matter and they will change this once they understand the consequences.

Paying more to get unlimited could be understood... I'm fine with a company making a profit and upgrading networks etc. Removing a plan all together is the opposite - its bad business. They didn't do their homework on this one. It has nothing to do with entitlement, don't fool yourself just because it works for you.
 
gopherhockey said:
As someone commented on another blog, our company too requires unlimited data plans of all its employees (who are being reimbursed) because it is saving us millions per year on people no longer going over a limit. Millions! Now that AT&T won't have an unlimited plan we will no longer be able to give AT&T any new customers. That means no iPhone for our employees, and AT&T will lose tens of thousands of possible customers. For personal use this is not a big deal to me, but for corporate use this is a hugely stupid move. I do not think we are the only company with this policy in place. We're not going to change the policy for their sake and end up going back to the wasted $ on overage charges.
Click to expand...

I wonder what carrier you will end up with. Metro PCS? If you think this plan was not worked out between the major players (Meaning, certainly VZW and AT&T) you're surely mistaken. Every major carrier will be moving in this direction; now that the first one has made the move, the ball can really start rolling. Oh, sure, Sprint may lag behind simply because they have to in order to keep as many customers as possible (they already have a negative growth) but eventually, it will happen.
 
The unlimited was never unlimited anyway. There was always a 5GB soft cap even on the iPhone.

The only part of this news that bothers me is the way they are handling the tethering. Forcing you to change plans to add tethering and not giving you anymore data for doing it. Very pathetic move on AT&T's part.
 
indychris said:
That should be pretty obvious. The $30/month fee for the iPad that was supposed to be 'unlimited' is now, after only one month, being limited to 2GB. That's a bait-and-switch if I've ever heard one. I've never come close to approaching that much bandwidth on my cell, but with my iPad, I was up there easily in my first month. A few movies and some heavy surfing and it's not difficult to reach those numbers.
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No, 2GB will cost $25, and if you already have a contract, you'll be able to keep it. That's far from bait-n-switch.
 
GoodWrites said:
We are so drunk on entitlements in this country that we forget that AT&T os a FOR PROFIT company. Furthermore, if we want them to have the money to upgrade the network and roll-out new technologies (i.e. 4G), they MUST make profits. They said that 98% of AT&T customers do not even use 250 Mb.

Buy it or don't. But deal with it and stop complaining!
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Funny, because just about every other developed country is doing fine with their absurdly fast/large bandwidth and cheap prices...
 
Cynicalone said:
The unlimited was never unlimited anyway. There was always a 5GB soft cap even on the iPhone.
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There was never a cap on the iPhone data plan. Because if there was they would have called me and warned be about using GB's of data. And No i did not JB my iphone and use my-wi like some have.
 
Any ideas of how this will pan out for people with family plans?
My monthly is 500 MB, my wife is 100 MB.

If they let us have a single $25/2Gig between us, I'd be thrilled. And that would be fair.
If we can choose separate plans for each line, then that comes to $15 plus $25... 40 instead of the current 60. Less thrilling, but still saves us $20/mo.

But if they require 2 $25/2G plans, then I'll just stay with my current contract.
 
seems a lot of people like the idea of unlimited more than the actual practice. i'd be willing to bet that even people on this message board, who are almost certainly power users, less than 10% actually use more than 2GB in a month.

as others have said, ultimately i'd like to see them move to family plans, you pay for a block of data and can use it on any registered device.
 
Ill stick with my Verizon unlimited plan, thank you very much. And verizon said they are only switching to tiered pricing for 4g service not 3g.
 
People, lets get one thing straight, the majority of all of us here will never hit the soft cap anyway because as has been proven time and time again, all most of you do is browse and that's nowhere near any of the caps. Unless you're downloading illegal movies, work with big media files or something of that nature you're never going to hit the caps. So, stop complaining over something that doesn't even affect you.

Second, this move won't matter at all to most customers for the aforementioned reason. But, this might affect AT&T in the business segment with growing iPhone and I imagine this will slow down iPhone sales in the AT&T business segment and push them back to BlackBerry since BlackBerry's Internet Service actually compresses data between the BlackBerry and Network by some 70+% so they all can get the lowest data plan, do the same thing they were doing and never hit the cap.

However, every carrier is going to go this route. So, companies will just need to learn to adapt. This is a huge win for BlackBerry in the enterprise segment though no matter what carrier has tiered pricing since it's the only device with BIS, BES and BESX that handles all compression. Sprint will probably continue to offer unlimited cause they NEED customers, and T-Mobile will probably stay where they are for mostly the same reason and the fact that their 3G isn't up to par with everyone else to even start thinking about doing tiered.
 
Cynicalone said:
The unlimited was never unlimited anyway. There was always a 5GB soft cap even on the iPhone.

The only part of this news that bothers me is the way they are handling the tethering. Forcing you to change plans to add tethering and not giving you anymore data for doing it. Very pathetic move on AT&T's part.
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Not true. I know people well over 5GB with their iPhones. And i personally used over 5GB on my ipad last month.
 
That seems like a nicer plan and scales with you. They are clamping down on the bandwidth hogs I see. Good for AT&T. It would be nice to have the tiered data plan on the iPhone too. As I understand it there's only one rate now and that's what has kept me from buying an iPhone with AT&T.
 
TheOrioles33 said:
Yeah, I dont understand why everyone thinks the grass is greener on the other side.
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Having a monthly bill from AT&T and Verizon both, I can guarantee that the grass is greener only due to the septic tank buried beneath it.

Verizon is NOT the droid you are looking for!
 
i'm the one that asked at&t about the 2g upgrade.

haha. i got on the front page of macrumors.com. sweeettt

i had no clue they would take a screenshot like that though.

anyway, i'm glad I get to keep the unlimited plan. With the inevitable video chat, netflix app, and eventual hulu app- it would have been a little too easy to jump over 2 gigs.
 
gan6660 said:
Ill stick with my Verizon unlimited plan, thank you very much. And verizon said they are only switching to tiered pricing for 4g service not 3g.
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LOL that's what you think. Verizon also said they would never offer an unlimited plan and then look at what happened.

The reason verizon will switch to Tiered more sooner than later is because AT&T did it. Remember also Verizon required the mandatory data plans on smartphones only after AT&T did on their smartphones.

History repeats itself between both of these companies.
 
iPad 3G plan

I have an iPad 3G and I have the unlimited plan. However, I wasn't planning to subscribe to the 3G service every month. If I don't renew my plan for July but want to subscribe in August, am I locked into the unlimited rate because I've already initiated service, or am stuck with the new 2GB plan?
 
What about family plans?

My wife and I have shared minutes for voice, and that suits us, but I use data on the phone a lot more than she does.

Do family plan phones have to have the same data plan? My wife has never used even 100MB a month much less 200. I'd like for her phone to be set up with the cheaper plan. Even if I have to "downgrade" to the 2GB plan on my phone, it'd be worth it (and I've never used more than 1GB on the phone in a month anyway).

Seems like not allowing us to have different data plans would be kind of a rip off given that we can't pool our megabytes the same way we currently pool our minutes.
 
I wonder what is Apple's view on this AT&T change. I would think Apple would not be happy because it's bad news for new iPhone contracts which is bad for Apple's bottom line. I thought Apple had more leverage here. I guess that's why so many here think this is AT&T's answer to the end of exclusivity.
 
nsayer said:
My wife and I have shared minutes for voice, and that suits us, but I use data on the phone a lot more than she does.

Do family plan phones have to have the same data plan? My wife has never used even 100MB a month much less 200. I'd like for her phone to be set up with the cheaper plan. Even if I have to "downgrade" to the 2GB plan on my phone, it'd be worth it (and I've never used more than 1GB on the phone in a month anyway).

Seems like not allowing us to have different data plans would be kind of a rip off given that we can't pool our megabytes the same way we currently pool our minutes.
Click to expand...

Precisely. Our use patterns are identical.
We'd be thrilled if we could just get $25 for 2Gig between us.
 
This is all going to change one day to be much fairer, without all these tricky rules designed to squeeze money out of you. One day, the actual internet access will be billed separately. You will pay by the MB like you pay by the watt and there will be so much competition to be the supplier costs will hover near the actual cost to do business. One day...
 
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