AT&T Announces New Wireless Data Plans, Unlimited Data Plan Gone

Submitted by lalit on June 2, 2010 - 1:50pm.

AT&T today introduced new wireless data plans that start at $15 a month for 200MB data or $25 per month for 2GB of data. AT&T says the new data plans make it more affordable for more people to enjoy the benefits of the mobile Internet. The new data plans are divided as follows:

DataPlus: Provides 200 megabytes (MB) of data - enough to send/receive 1,000 emails (no attachments), send/receive 150 emails with attachments, view 400 Web pages, post 50 photos on social media sites and 20 minutes of streaming video - for just $15 per month. If customers exceed 200 MB in a monthly billing cycle, they will receive an additional 200 MB of data usage for $15 for use in the month.
DataPro: Provides 2 gigabytes (GB) of data - enough to send/receive 10,000 emails (no attachments), send/receive 1,500 emails with attachments, view 4,000 Web pages, post 500 photos to social media sites and watch 200 minutes of streaming video - for $25 per month. Should a customer exceed 2 GB during a billing cycle, they will receive an additional 1 GB of data for $10 for use in the month.
Tethering: Smartphone customers - including iPhone customers - who choose the DataPro plan have the option to add tethering for an additional $20 per month. Tethering enables customers to use their smartphone as a modem to provide a broadband connection for laptop computers, netbooks or other computing devices.

AT&T claims that 65% of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 200MB data and 98 percent use less than 2GB a month on average. This might be true for all smartphones combined, but when it comes to iPhone users data published by Consumerreports.org indicates that around 50-60 percent iPhone customers use 200MB to 1GB data per month. Meaning most iPhone users will be forced to either limit their data use to get $15 plan or they will have to pay $25 for 2GB plan, which they don’t need. If AT&T would have given more reasonable 500MB data with $15 plan it would have been an excellent choice for over 75 percent iPhone customers.

AT&T will allow current iPhone customers to keep their unlimited data plan, even when they upgrade to upcoming fourth generation iPhone later this month. However, the new iPhone customers won’t have that option.