The internet has been buzzing today at what many claim are the worst plans AT&T have ever come out with and that these new plans are evil and unjust, but are these plans really that bad according to 99.99% of all the comments? Let’s take a look shall we.
Unlike most, I will take the opposite view today and say that these plans might not be as bad as many are making them out to be. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, AT&T basically said today that in the very near future, there will no longer be an Unlimited Data plan for you to buy. At $30-35/month, these seemed pretty affordable but not when compared to what some of the other carriers are charging for unlimited. AT&T will be replacing the unlimited plan with what it calls the DataPlus and DataPro plans. DataPlus will be $15/month and cap data usage at 200MB while DataPro will be $25/month and have data capped at 2GB. People are basically up in arms because this takes away the whole “unlimited” part of data usage. Again though, is this really a bad thing?
Like most of you, at first it seemed like such a greedy move to take away unlimited data plans from its users however, AT&T’s reasoning here is that most people never use the full potential of unlimited data anyways so why pay for it? If you check your data usage each month, you may be surprised at what you find.
Checking over my current BlackBerry data usage, I am well under 200MB for the month coming in at around 155MB of data usage. That includes recieving emails regularly, twittering every few minutes, Facebook, AIM, Foursquare and the occasional app download. I do not stream movies but I do listen to Pandora every so often. Another example is my friend Kevin. He has an iPhone and also receives regular emails, txt, uses twitter, facebook, AIM, etc and his data usage falls around the area right below 200MB as well. If this is normal usage for both of us, we could in essence drop down to the DataPlus service for $15/month and save $15 every month on our data plans. This adds up in the long run.
I would say a minority of users actually use more the 2GB a month and I would say those are mainly iPhone users right now who stream youtube, music, and download lots and lots of apps. For those, AT&T is still letting you keep your $30/month unlimited plan. That’s right, even if you upgrade to the new iPhone, AT&T will let you keep your current unlimited plan as long as you originally had it. All new users will have to get the new DataPLus and DataPro plans. Unlimited users however will not be able to tether with that plan. Again, I don’t see this as a huge problem as a small minority of people actually tether their phones anyways. I have a BlackBerry which allows tethering and I have not used that function more then once.
I think if most people just sit down and take a look at what they actually use data wise each month, they’ll see that their total overall data usage really isn’t all that much and they would actually save quite a bit of money dropping to DataPlus but not really that much with DataPro. DataPro you would only be saving about $5 so you might as well just keep your unlimited data plan for $5 more.
Now, I’m not saying that these plans are all roses either as the tethering plan for the new dataplans is ridiculous. For an extra $20/month, AT&T will let you tether your phone, BUT you would only still be able to use the original data allotment that they gave you which makes no sense. If AT&T were smart, they would just throw in tethering for free as an incentive to choose the new data plans. ONly time will tell what they do with this.
Its also been stated that the new data plan pricing will trickle down to its other offerings and not just the iPhone. BlackBerrys will see this new data structure as well and so will all other non-iPhone/BlackBerry phones. I think this will be reasonable for those who want data, but only enough for what they need it for. Not everyone needs unlimited. Also, don’t be surprised if you see these kind of structures popping up at other carriers this year.
The Gamer With Kids 