New Data Plan Pricing For At&t Smartphones

Does the Data plan changes really hurt subscribers, maybe not now but with 4g in sight and video calling and new Apps/programs, it may cost more or limited your use in the near future.

Will this affect your usage on your iPhone, is anyone using 2gig or more right now (not including Tethering).

ARTICLE.....

The existing $30 fair-use "unlimited" smartphone data plan is being replaced by two new options: $15 per month for 200MB and $25 for 2GB (called "DataPlus" and "DataPro," respectively). Customers currently on the $30 plan are welcome to stay on it, but they can switch at any time without extending their contract.

AT&T's new overage system is arguably the game changer: on the $15 plan, you'll pay $15 for each additional 200MB, but on the $25 plan, you'll pay $10 for each additional GB. It's simple and straightforward -- but most importantly, it won't bankrupt you if you go over by a gig or three in a month. This compares to $50 per gigabyte of overage on AT&T's 5GB DataConnect plan for laptops.

The carrier's going to be very flexible about changing between the DataPlus and DataPro plans -- if you're on DataPlus, for example, and you discover that you're blowing past your allotment, you can choose either to start DataPro the following billing cycle, pro-rate it, or apply the higher plan retroactively to the beginning of your current billing cycle. That's pretty wild.

We're definitely mourning the death of unlimited data -- "unlimited" is a word that consumers always naturally like to hear -- but AT&T points out that 98 percent of its smartphone subscribers use less than 2GB a month, which means that nearly all users ultimately stand to see a $5 reduction in their monthly bills. We spoke to Mark Collins -- AT&T Mobility's senior vice president of data and voice products -- about the changes for a few clarifications on the company's strategy, and he made it crystal clear that the concept of unlimited data is a thing in the past.

FULL ARTICLE HERE@
AT&T makes sweeping changes to data plans, iPhone tethering coming at OS 4 launch -- Engadget

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› See More: New Data Plan Pricing For At&t Smartphones

Look who is taking the lead on this one...it's AT&T.

Verizon Wireless originally started the 5GB cap for mobile broadband and then others followed.

AT&T started this, other carriers will follow suit.

AT&T users can keep unlimited data plans even when upgrading to iPhone HD/iPhone 4G… unless they want tethering. And how to check your data usage.

We know that AT&T’s sudden announcement that it will put a halt to unlimited data put a lot of you into a tailspin this morning, but now that you’ve had some time to come to terms with the change (provided you didn’t immediately switch to another carrier), let’s take a moment to think about this. Many of you are going to grandfather your unlimited plan, but a lot will leave to either save a few bucks or to enable iPhone tethering. If you’re one of the later, how much data will you need? Unless you’re planning to tether, it’s pretty easy to predict how much data you’ll use in the future by looking into how much you’ve used in the past. And thankfully AT&T has a way for you to do this. Here’s how.

Hit up att.com and log into your online account
Click on My Accounts and select Bill & Payments
Click Billing Reports and select Data Trends
Hit Submit

From there, you’ll be able to get a detailed history of your wireless data usage. If you’re an iPhone user, you can simply grab AT&T’s myWireless Mobile app from the App Store. Unfortunately with the latter you’re restricted to viewing your usage from the current billing cycle, but maybe, just maybe, the app will get an update. How much data do you use a month?


AT&T users can keep unlimited data plans even when upgrading to iPhone HD/iPhone 4G… unless they want tethering. And how to check your data usage. | TiPb

Yea, I don't (nor ever would want to) use AT&T..but I was just commenting that it is a first that another carrier, besides Verizon, started a trend.

And indeed, he did clear up one thing for me. If you’re on the Data Plus plan, that costs you $15 for 200 MB no matter how much data you use. If you use 201 MB in a month, that’s $30; if you use 401 MB, it’s $45, and so on. If you go up to say 1.9 GB in a month, that’s $150 — six times the $25 you would pay to consume the same amount of data on the Data Pro plan.

Is there any point, I asked Siegel, at which AT&T will help a brother out and automatically switch a heavy data user from Data Plus to Data Pro? No, he told me: “Our assumption is that people are intelligent enough to see that they’re going over. People are way smart enough to manage their own usage.”

This puts a large and unnecessary onus onto people with phones, especially phones with WiFi capability. If you only use data-heavy applications like YouTube or Pandora when you’re connected to a WiFi hotspot, you should be fine with the lower data plan — until that fateful day when your WiFi craps out without you noticing, and you rapidly rack up a huge amount of data usage inadvertently.

Read Article here@
AT&T tries to defend its data pricing | Analysis & Opinion |

Originally Posted by aepple

And indeed, he did clear up one thing for me. If you’re on the Data Plus plan, that costs you $15 for 200 MB no matter how much data you use. If you use 201 MB in a month, that’s $30; if you use 401 MB, it’s $45, and so on. If you go up to say 1.9 GB in a month, that’s $150 — six times the $25 you would pay to consume the same amount of data on the Data Pro plan.

Is there any point, I asked Siegel, at which AT&T will help a brother out and automatically switch a heavy data user from Data Plus to Data Pro? No, he told me: “Our assumption is that people are intelligent enough to see that they’re going over. People are way smart enough to manage their own usage.”

This puts a large and unnecessary onus onto people with phones, especially phones with WiFi capability. If you only use data-heavy applications like YouTube or Pandora when you’re connected to a WiFi hotspot, you should be fine with the lower data plan — until that fateful day when your WiFi craps out without you noticing, and you rapidly rack up a huge amount of data usage inadvertently.

Read Article here@
AT&T tries to defend its data pricing | Analysis & Opinion |

It would be wise to get the DataPro option if you expect to use close to 200 megabytes per month. For $10.00 more, you have a 1.8 gigabyte cushion.