This Is What AT&T Wants To Charge You Every Month For Your LTE iPhone

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Remember that Lulzsec hack the other day that showed that AT&T was already testing iPads on their next generation 4G network?

Well, there’s even more interesting information in the leak than that. Complete details about AT&T’s proposed LTE data plans make it clear that when Apple does release an iPhone or iPad 4G, prohibitive data caps, massive overage charges and automatically throttled bandwidth will be the rule of the day.

Starting at $30 and going all the way to $80 per month, here are AT&T’s proposed LTE data plans:

• For $30 per month, you get 5GB of data, with 7.0Mbps download speeds and 3.0Mbps upload speed. Go over your allotted data, though, and your speeds drop to 3.0Mbps down and 1.0Mbps up. Go over by a gig and your speed further drops to 500kbps down and up. 2GB over? You’re cut off, jack. That seems to be true even if you pay AT&T their overage charge of $0.05 per meg over, which is just extortionate.

• The $60 plan works similarly, except your download speeds are faster. For your $60, you get 10GB of data starting at 9.0Mbps down and 5.0Mbps up. Reach 10.5GB as a data cap, though, and your speeds drop to 3.0Mbps down and 1.0Mbps up. Hit 14GB and AT&T drops you to 500kbps down and up. Overage charges are again $0.05 per meg, but AT&T won’t actually suspend your account at any point.

• The $80 plan is the big boy. For that, you get 20GB of data, with 12.0Mbps download speeds and 7.5Mbps upload speeds. Hit 25GB and those speeds drop to 7.0Mbps down and 3.0Mbps up. Reach 30GB and, again, you see a drop in download speeds to 500kbps down and up. Overage charges are $0.05.

Granted, these are just proposed data plans, but I’m sure these numbers make a lot of people nervous. At first blush, AT&T’s LTE data plans seem to be reasonably priced, and we like the way you actually pay for faster tiers of service as well as more bandwidth, but one thing’s for sure: Ma Bell will expect you to stay within your data cap or else. The overage charge of $0.05 a meg is just shocking.

Looking at this leak, it seems that when Apple does release an iPhone or iPad with 4G LTE, that extra dose of speed means most of us will be watching out data caps even more closely, living in paranoid fear of that one errantly streamed Netflix video turning into a $500 AT&T overage bill.

There’s more information, including AT&T’s “speed boost” pricing and prepaid options, over at iFans.

What do you think? Are these prices you can live with for LTE on your iPhone? Let us know.

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