AT&T's unlimited data plans are going away.
That said, I’ll probably save $30 a month being that we only use 100-125mb each billing cycle. So I’m sort of OK with this.
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See I don’t get how the whole data thing works on a phone. Like what counts as data usage and how do I know what mine is?
When I look in my usage screen it says Cellular Network Data and under Sent it says 575MB and under received it says 5.8GB. What time frame is that? Is that since I got the phone (It says my Last Reset was “Never”) I get my home and work e-mail on the phone so that’s my main usage. Is that pretty much all that counts toward that number?
I am probably going to get a new phone when we get back from our trip and was planning to join 2010 and get something with internet on it. I just want to be able to find restaurants or movies or gps…I don’t even want to check email.
Verizon has a $9.99 plan (in addition to my $39.99 plan that I barely use my phone minutes for) that includes 250MB a month. Of course, no one at the Verizon store can tell me what average useage for someone like me would be. It makes me feel better that you only use 100-125mb per cycle. The next tier up is a $29.99 per month charge for either unlimited or 2GB, I can’t remember.
I would be willing to be most people use around 250MB per cycle, hence one pricing tier at 200MB and one at 2GB for “only” $10 more. sneaky.
I’ve got an AT&T app on my iPhone that tracks my minutes/texts/data usage. Seems that my past month has used about 450 MB, which was easily heavier than normal.
Not sure how some people are gobbling up several gigs of data on this thing. I thought 3G capped downloads at around 10 MB or something… so it’s not like people are pulling movies down over the Apple store without the use of a wireless network.
Kev, you gotta log on to AT&T and look at your monthly data usage. Those numbers you’re looking at on your phone are all-time. Work email counts, as does web surfing, any push notifications, app store updates received over 3g, that sort of thing. Anything that hits 3g that isn’t a phonecall.
Justin: my guess? iPhone porn.
Gotta question the timing of this. I’d imagine there are going to be a bunch of disgruntled early iPad adopters. It would have been a lot less sneaky for Apple to have pushed this through prior to its launch.
Also, is the goal here to ease the burden on the network or to bring in even more customers? These plans, at least on the surface, look to be more affordable than the existing ones. Seems to me like the iPhone, which already sucks my ass in NYC, is going to get even worse if this opens it up to a new tier of customer.
Still not regretting my decision to get an Android phone…
It kicks in June 7 — right when the iPhone 4g is expected to be announced. Don’t mistake Apple’s actions for AT&T’s, though. Rumor has it that Jobs is furious.
In theory, though Jay, this should improve service quite a bit by killing off the 2-5% who use more than 2g a month.
Yeah, i am definitely for this. I am sure that i rarely go over their lowest setting and if that saves me $10-$15 a month then great!
Wow. I just checked and looked at my data history. My lowest month of the past 6 months I used 299 mb of data. The highest was 642.
I receive several hundred work e-mails a day so that could be the culprit. I should probably turn the work e-mail off when I am actually at work and only on when I am out of the office. That might help.
I tend to think that people actually aren’t that angry about caps on this sort of thing so much as they get angry when they hear “unlimited” and get capped anyway. Like Comcast.
Give people enough information to track their usage and know their limits before a higher price kicks in and I’m sure everybody ends up pretty happy.
Kevin said:Wow. I just checked and looked at my data history. My lowest month of the past 6 months I used 299 mb of data. The highest was 642.
I receive several hundred work e-mails a day so that could be the culprit. I should probably turn the work e-mail off when I am actually at work and only on when I am out of the office. That might help.
I’m not positive, but you might even be able to make it only check your mail when you’re on WIFI.
I definitely don’t want it to only check when I’m on wi-fi. I want it to be checking through 3G since that’s the quickest/easiest way and I don’t have to find a network, etc. But right now, I keep it on throughout the work day so if I get an e-mail on my work computer, my phone buzzes as well, which admittedly is silly. I just need to turn that e-mail account off when I come in to work and turn it on when I leave.
Good point about mistaking AT&T for Apple. They are one in the same to me at this point.
Also Hutch, it boggles my mind that you only use about 125 megs a month. I would think a nerd of your level would be one of the data hogs that this policy is aimed at eradicating, but I guess what this means is that you are just not away from a real computer enough to use crazy amounts of data? I’ve used 500Mb for each of the last two billing cycles and I honestly thought I was a “light” user.
I think using Opera as my main browser helps A LOT. It compresses data as it comes down. I noticed in January, the last month before I used Opera, my usage was around 300.
Then again, I also had a job in an office, so that could have contributed.
i’m not sure how much data i use per month (should probably check), but i’m on an unlimited plan with Verizon for my Droid. contrary to those who warned me against it, i love the damn thing.
You have a shitty phone that’s shitty.