…All on the world’s crappiest… Never Mind…

There’s a great deal of chatter going on today regarding AT&T and the changes they’ve announced to their data plans prior to the Apple event where the announcement of the 4G iPhone is expected.

When the iPhone 3G was made available, AT&T mandated unlimited data plans for every iPhone user at $30 bucks a month.  This increased the ToC and changed the landscape for smartphone use as you could NOT use any other data plans (like many of us did back in the day), and Pay as You Go plans got REALLY expensive, or fell into the bucket of non-usable data plans.

Today, AT&T announced the elimination of the unlimited data plan.  In its place, they’ve announced two new plans – Data Plus and Data Pro. Here’s the skinny on each.

Data Plus

• 200MB bandwidth allotment (note, that’s MEGAbytes, folks)
• $15 per month cost, base
• $15 for each additional 200MB

Data Pro

• 2GB bandwidth allotment
• $25 per month cost, base
• $10 for each additional 1GB
• Required for tethering

Please note that tethering is NOT included.  If you want to tether your iPhone, or any other smartphone, (yes, apparently iPhone OS 4 devices will be able to tether), you MUST be a Data Pro customer, and you’ll need to fork over an additional $20/month for the privilege.  Your bottom line cost for 2GB of data with tethering is $45/month.  Again, additional data over your initial 2GB allotment will cost you $10/GB.

For most smartphone users, this might not be an issue, but if you do ANYthing of note over 3G/4G (one YouTube video up or down, and you could be through your 200MB plan…) you might want to rethink the Data Plus plan.

The new plans go into effect on June 7, 2010 and will be used for all new devices/upgrades from that point forward. If you don’t change or get a new smartphone, you get to keep your unlimited plan.

Its been noted that VzW will also be changing their data plan rates and will be switching to a tiered model.  I have no idea if Sprint or T-Mobile will be making any kind of a change.  They have customer retention issues enough as it is; and I don’t know what kind of bandwidth they have available vs. smartphone usage.

This comes as no real surprise to many of us at JAMM, though.  Doug has been predicting a change in data plan structure for a while. 

The problem is this all started as cell phones plans with extras.  Now, voice is almost an extra to data, but no one really knows what to do with that.

He makes a GREAT point.  My family has unlimited everything/everything.  However, we use more data than voice, me more than either of the other two lines on our voice/data plan. If we don’t start REALLY using the phones for calls, then I’ll likely back us down to a more reasonably priced calling plan.

Will this effect you?  What are your thoughts on all of this?  Why not chime in and give us your thoughts in the comments?

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