Opinion: AT&T’s New Data Plans Make iPhone Look Worse Than Android

After just two months of (perhaps overconfidently) offering a $29.99 unlimited, month-by-month data plan to purchasers of the iPad, Ma Bell has already killed it off… and are now replacing it with a vastly inferior and more pricy plan.

The new plan — called DataPro — offers 2GB of data per month for $25. Go over 2GB in a month and you’re charged another $25, with your 30 day window to use that 2GB resetting itself.

Think that’s bad? It gets worse. AT&T is also canceling unlimited data for the iPhone. Current subscribers get to keep their $30 all-you-can-eat plans, but when you new customers or contract renewers will now only get 2GB of data.

The positive side? After over a year of waffling on it, AT&T are finally bringing tethering to the table with iPhone OS 4.0. But you have to pay an additional $20 a month for it, and you’re still only limited to 2GB. To put this in perspective, this is twice as much as Verizon charges for 5GB of tethering data on a $29.99 unlimited monthly data plan.

Our succinct thoughts on the matter, after the jump.

&%$@ you, AT&T. Has there ever been a more worthless telecom? After three full years of supplying terrible service to their iDevice customers and skimping at every turn on using their profit from iPhone contracts to substantially improve their 3G networks, they’re now raising prices for inferior service.

It’s shameless, but what’s worse is the fact that AT&T feels like they can do this. This is not a telecom that feels like serious competition is right around the corner from another carrier. That AT&T feels they are in a good position to raise prices while shrinking data caps implies they know full well that a Verizon iPhone isn’t coming anytime soon.

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AT&T Kills Unlimited Mobile Data Plan In Favor Of Two New “Limited Data” Plans, Provides U.S. Tethering Details

Let me be blunt: if I were in the States, this move would cause me to drop my iPhone contract at the next opportunity, wander over to Verizon and get a Android handset with an unlimited, $29.99 per month data plan. An additional $10 a month would get me 5GB of tethering, or two and a half times as much data for half as much money.

AT&T is now actively making the iPhone look worse than Android. Why is Apple sticking with these bozos? They’ve betrayed them and their customers.

We’re curious what you think. Is Apple’s continuing partnership with AT&T taking the luster off of the iPhone for you? Let us know in the comments.

53 comments »

About the author

John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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http://twitter.com/44r0n7x Oz
Apple is not going to build an iPhone that supports all the US carriers anytime soon.
Like virtually all other handset owners iPhone users are out of luck with their choice of high speed data carriers. T-mobile and At&T 3g signal at different frequencies, and are not compatible.
iPhone supports AT&T’s 3g data network only. You can take your unlocked iPhone 3g and GSM+Edge with T-Mobile, but you’re not going to be doing anything that requires high speed internet. Definitely not FaceTime.
Verizon is out of the question for current iPhone owners.
The only handset I know of that supports two 3G networks in the USA is the Nokia N8, which is available in Q3 2010. It will work with T-mobile and AT&T 3G networks.
Danny
It’s kinds of stupid to think that you could save $5 a month. If only
one of the 12 months, any of your kids, your wife, just a little bit over
the 200mb, 5 months saving is gone. When will this happen?
One single day in a year, you or your family members just go outsides
the wifi area, you will out bill immediatly. it won’t take
a few webpages for you to over 200mb.
It just some stupid tricks to guile you. 98% of the guys
never pass 200mn a single month one year?
I don’t think at&t will reveal the real statistics.
John
Here are the questions you have to ask yourself:
1) Why buy an IPhone 4 with GPS, video call capability, etc. if your really can’t use any of it because of data limitations? The whole point of the new IPhone is the data component and now they are saying, “Well, we are going to give you more features in this new phone but if you actually use them it will cost you. The WiFi argument is not valid because while it is nice when it is there, it defeats the purpose of having these feature in a phone anyway. If you are always where there is WiFi, there are better options than a tiny screen phone.
2) If AT&T is making money under the unlimited plan and users are not for the most part going over 2GB anyway, why change? Do you really believe a public company with profit expectations would do something to hurt their bottom line to benefit their customers if they don’t have to? Not likely.
3) Isn’t the timing of this interesting considering the airlines are also playing games with pricing trying to squeeze every dollar they can out of their customers? I view this whole thing like the slight of hand at the grocery store where prices stay the same but the package continues to shrink. I challenge you to find one pound of much of anything anymore.