Hijinks Inc.

AT&T’s New Data Plans

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Aaron Nelsen

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Death StarThis is more of a rant than an informative post…

By now, I’m sure all of you have read about AT&T’s “fantastic” new data plans, offering such wonderful options as a DataPro plan with 2 friggin’ GBs of data a month! Holy crap!!

Did anyone see my data usage for last month? I’d be screwed if they weren’t letting existing customers keep their unlimited plans, but now I can never cancel and re-up with the same plan at a later date, basically locking me into the very contract I was promised I’d avoid.

The iPad is a fantastic platform to consume media with, I do so quite a bit while traveling and often in places that don’t have WiFi access or worse, charge for it. During the original announcement of the iPad 3G one of the primary selling points for me was the unlimited data plan, and before AT&T’s announcement of the their awesome new plans I was going to purchase a second iPad 3G for my wife to use, but frankly, 2GBs a month is in no way a ‘Pro’ data plan. I burn through that on my iPhone in a week, on my iPad in a few days. Really AT&T? You couldn’t at least top Verizon’s MiFi cap of 5GB? Now even though I admit I’m not a typical user, nor do I represent a typical users bandwidth consumption, I think we all can agree that these new plans are terrible. How can this be considered a competitive move in todays market, especially for drawing in new customers?

I love how MacRumors pointed out that it was previously thought that Apple launched the iPad on AT&T based primarily on the $29.99 unlimited data plan.

Apple had been expected by many observers to launch the iPad in a partnership with Verizon, but the Apple CEO Steve Jobs surprised many at the device’s January introduction by announcing that it would appear as an AT&T exclusive for 3G service in the U.S. Speculation centers around AT&T having outbid its competitors with its data plans for the iPad, offering unlimited data for $29.99 per month.

There goes that theory…

All in all, I’m concerned both as a shareholder and a consumer. This seems to be a major tactical misstep for both Apple and AT&T, am I just missing some massive piece of the puzzle?

Comments

3 responses to “AT&T’s New Data Plans”

  1. volerikan Avatar
    volerikan

    Haha, I finally got the micro sim. (Just in time too!) Activated, works great in the iPhone. I guess I should probably wait canceling my actual phone plan until 4.0 comes out, hopefully it doesn’t do anything to block this. You said in a previous post it worked on a 4.0 beta? What are the chances of it working on the actual 4.0 (non-jailbreak)

    Also, I assume you (or someone you know) has the 4.0 beta 3? I plan on using Skype as my main phone/SMS(?) app, and I’m not 100% sure how multitasking works. Does the OS automatically close an app if its been inactive for a while (generally, not just the Skype app)?

  2. Aaron Nelsen Avatar
    Aaron Nelsen

    In theory 4.0 won’t change much between the current beta and release, so the APN trick should still work without a jailbreak.

    Yes, I actually am an Apple Developer, so I have direct access to the betas and have tried it myself. With 4.0 the developers of Skype will need to add support for accepting calls while in the background, this is just because of the way Apple has gone about adding multitasking to the OS. But once they add that in it should be a great solution, especially since you have to quit apps manually (unless you use up all your system memory, in which case it would likely force quit an app or two).

  3. 30 Days Without Voice Service – Hijinks Inc.

    […] will admit this option isn’t quite as appealing since AT&T decided to change their iPad data plans, but for those lucky enough to still have unlimited data it might be worth a try. I’ll likely […]

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