AT&T completely eliminated its unlimited data plans last Wednesday. The announcement is billed as a reduction in the cost of its data plans.
Two new plans have been announced. DataPlus costs $15 a month for up to 200 megabytes of data and another $15 for an additional 200 megabytes if you go over. DataPro costs $25 a month for 2GB and an additional $10 per gigabyte for anything above that. This plan will also replace the iPad’s unlimited $30 pay per month data plan. As Gizmodo is quick to point out, a power user who would be consuming 5GB for $30 today will be paying $55 a month under the new plans.
Wednesday’s announcement finally included the release of tethering, a feature that was promised to iPhone users almost a year ago and users of other carriers and devices are already accustomed to. Tethering — the ability to tap into your existing data plan on your computer — will set you back an additional $20 for the same pool of data. That means that our power user would be paying $75 a month without taking into consideration a single voice minute.
Existing customers who are on the old unlimited data plan can choose to remain grandfathered in, even when signing a new contract, as longs as they don’t change any aspect of the plan. The same applies for iPad users that don’t stop automatically renewing their $30 unlimited plan. Any change in your current plan — like adding tethering, for example — will mean that you have to select one of the new options.
The real question here is whether AT&T is being anti consumer with these new plans or whether their claims that they are trying to give users cheaper options are true. AT&T claims that only a very small percentage of its customers use more than 2GB of data a month and that the new plans will make data cheaper for most existing customers and available for those who previously withheld from purchasing smartphones because of the expensive monthly payments.
Say you use plenty of mobile data every month. You download songs, read your email, watch the ocassional YouTube video and spend your days listening to Pandora. Do you use more than 200 megabytes? More than 2GB?
If you currently have a smartphone on AT&T there is an easy way to check if the new plans would actually save you money. If you sign in to your online account, on the bottom right corner of the “Account Overview” page there is a link that says “View Past Data Usage.” There you will see a graph similar to this one. I, for one, could save myself $15 a month on AT&T’s new plans. Maybe I should look into a switch to capped data.
AT&T is the first carrier to get rid of their unlimited data plan, but it is unlikely. The far more likely possibility is that AT&T is the lone horseman of the forthcoming unlimited data apocalypse. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not.