Jan 19, 2012 2:06pm AT&T Data Price Hike Makes Wi-Fi Look Rosy
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/01/att-data-price-hike-makes-wi-fi-look-rosy/ Data hogs who are considering purchasing a smartphone or tablet with an AT&T plan may want to act quickly, or find the nearest wireless spots. AT&T is raising the price of its wireless data plans and changing the data limits for new customers starting Sunday. The changes could add up to an extra $60 a year. AT&T announced that new smartphone customers would have a choice of three new monthly data plans: $20 for 300 megabytes,or $30 for 3 gigabytes. For $50, smartphone customers get 5 GB of data for tethering, or for sharing the Internet connection of another mobile device. While the company described the new plans as a “great value,” Mike Gikas, Consumer Reports’ electronics senior editor, said, “giving you more data that you’re probably not going to use and charging you more is just a price hike.” New smartphone customers who want additional data will have to pay $10 per additional gigabyte on the 3 GB and 5 GB plans. New customers with the 300 MB plan can get an extra 300 MB for $20. Because data usage over Wi-Fi does not count against a customer’s monthly data usage, AT&T said it encouraged customers to keep their device’s Wi-Fi turned on. However, smartphone users who enable Wi-Fi on their phone may burn through battery power. Existing smartphone and tablet customers can choose to keep their current plans, which are $15 for 200 MB, $25 for 2GB and $45 for 4 GB, and also include tethering, according to Consumer Reports. Under the old $25 plan, AT&T charged an overage fee of $10 per GB, so the new $30 plan could save data hogs $5 per month, according to Time. The new tablet plans are $30 for 3 GB and $50 for 5 GB. “Customers are using more data than ever before,” David Christopher, the chief marketing officer at AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said in a statement. “Our new plans are driven by this increasing demand in a highly competitive environment, and continue to deliver a great value to customers, especially as we continue our 4G LTE deployment.” Most people do not come close to using 2 GB of data unless they constantly stream media, for example, by watching movies on their phones through Netflix or iTunes. When AT&T introduced its tiered pricing system in June 2010, it said that 2 GB satisfied 97 percent of its customers, Gizmodo reported. “The magic number is usually 1 GB, which is probably why most people went for the 2 GB plan,” Gikas said. Those with unlimited data plans might still feel stifled if they’d been downloading and streaming an extremely large amount of data. AT&T announced in July that the top 5 percent of data users experienced slower speeds starting this past October. In July, competitor Verizon Wireless eliminated unlimited data plans for new smartphone customers and introduced plans of $30 for 2 GB, $50 for 5 GB or $80 for 10 gigabytes of monthly data usage. Verizon customers are charged $10 more for each additional GB. While AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have introduced tiered pricing for data plans, Sprint Nextel Corp., the country’s third-largest carrier, is the only one to still offer unlimited plans. --- Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it. _______________________________________________ Infowarrior mailing list [email protected] https://attrition.org/mailman/listinfo/infowarrior
