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When will data plan rates come down?

barnaby117

barnaby117

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 5, 2007
75
25
Do you think we will ever see a reduction in the $30/month iPhone rate plan? Apple's gotten aggressive on the handset pricing, but it would nice to see them and AT&T make iPhone really affordable for families on a budget. I'm sure it's coming, just a matter of when. Thoughts?
 
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1st January, Never
 
barnaby117 said:
Do you think we will ever see a reduction in the $30/month iPhone rate plan? Apple's gotten aggressive on the handset pricing, but it would nice to see them and AT&T make iPhone really affordable for families on a budget. I'm sure it's coming, just a matter of when. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

The iPhone 4G will come out next year, and the data plan for that one will be $50 a month. How you like them apples? ;)

I ended up buying a iPhone 3G on EBay to get around the data plan (don't need it.) But I don't think prices are going to come down anytime soon, for most consumers the initial hardware cost is probably the biggest sales barrier- Sales of the 3G iPhone have been better than the 2G, and the hardware price went down and the data plan price went up.
 
When the majority of the population have smartphones and dataplans as opposed to the standard cellphones most have now. In about 5 years the market will be saturated and carriers will need to lower dataplan prices to compete.
 
My boss received his first iPhone bill a few weeks ago, and it was substantially into 4 figures. He's a very heavy phone user, and was previously on a high-end tariff with lots of call minutes included, so when he switched to one of the standard iPhone tariffs: massive bill.

He went back to the store, explained his situation, and the guy in the store called the network and managed to get him onto a business tariff not advertised online, including a data roaming package which I'd never heard of before!

I know this is a different network, but at least it shows the networks can be flexible on plans.
 
barnaby117 said:
Do you think we will ever see a reduction in the $30/month iPhone rate plan?
Click to expand...
Remember about two years ago when unlimited smartphone data was $44.99/month on AT&T + Verizon?

I agree with barkomatic. Rates will lower when smartphone growth starts to decline. Right now, even at $30/month, it seems like everyone is clamoring to get a smartphone.
 
its only $30/month, a dollar a day!!!! if u cant afford that than stick w/ a razr.

or stop eating out so much and just cook at home :p
 
AT&T will hold these rates as long as they possibly can.

Their whole business strategy on the 3G iPhone was to eat the cost of hardware subsidies but make it up through data rates over the next several years. Dropping rates now would be counter productive to that.
 
cWeems said:
its only $30/month, a dollar a day!!!! if u cant afford that than stick w/ a razr.

or stop eating out so much and just cook at home :p
Click to expand...

stupid answer. The rates will not drop anytime soon. The data network is getting improved all the time and is yet to settle. The bettter the technology the more you'll pay. To can get data for $6 a month from Tmobile, I used to have that. It was too slow and you couldn't stream anything. Text messaging keeps going up so I will be suprised if data drops in price.
 
barnaby117 said:
Do you think we will ever see a reduction in the $30/month iPhone rate plan?
Click to expand...

When competition, with equally attractive but lower priced offerings, forces them to reduce it.

I don't see anything that would attract a good percentage of current iPhone customers on the horizon for at least a couple years.

.
 
well, i paid $45 a month for the blackberry curve data plan before switching to the iPhone. and that's without 3G speeds. so aren't you glad we're only paying $30 a month??

if you really wanna save money, you can jailbreak your iphone, get the tethering software, and cancel your home internet subscription...
 
They've got you by the balls for 2 years so not unil that is over. In reality probably not until the PDA / Smart phone market is saturated and tower upgrades start to slow down as most people become connected. 5+ years would be my guess.
 
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