AT&T Won’t Charge For FaceTime Over Cellular In iOS 6, But You’ll Have To Be On A New Mobile Share Plan

You don’t have to “pay” for FaceTime over Cellular, but there’s a catch.

Months ago, it was discovered that AT&T would likely charge for FaceTime over Cellular in iOS 6. You can’t actually use the feature in the iOS 6 beta on any carrier, and it was believed that AT&T would charge it as an additional service, like tethering.

Today AT&T has revealed that it will in fact not charge for FaceTime over Cellular, but customers will have to be on one of AT&T’s new Mobile Share data plans.

AT&T in an official statement:

AT&T will offer FaceTime over Cellular as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans, which were created to meet customers’ growing data needs at a great value. With Mobile Share, the more data you use, the more you save. FaceTime will continue to be available over Wi-Fi for all our customers.

The new Mobile Share plans will be made available on August 23rd, and customers aren’t being forced to upgrade. However, AT&T is obviously trying to get everyone off the single plans and onto shared data. This puts the current plan holders (especially the grandfathered unlimited data iPhone customers) between a rock and a hard place.

Sprint has already said that it won’t charge for FaceTime over Cellular when iOS 6 ships this fall, but Verizon has yet to announce its plans.

• Image Wired

Comment »