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Will AT&T Charge Extra For MMS & Tethering?
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder questions whether AT&T's jockeying on tethering and MMS may signal coming iPhone pricing surcharges. After all, as Apple's exclusive US partner, Ma Bell should have plenty of insight into upcoming iPhone features and revenue opportunities. Yet AT&T was very conspicuous in its absence from the list of providers who will support tethering and MMS at Tuesday's launch of the new iPhone at WWDC, and by Wednesday, it was backpedaling furiously, saying it will offer both services — later in the year. Certainly, the exclusive arrangement between the companies is proving to be an ugly roadblock to Apple's iPhone vision. But Snyder thinks it may go deeper than that: 'My best guess is that we'll see horrendous pricing surcharges for tethering and MMS, on top of the already expensive data and voice charges iPhone users pay. I don't think AT&T execs wanted to stand up at WWDC and announce that.'"
The iPhone, with itâ(TM)s global reach and marketing may be the first phone that makes it obvious just how far the US is behind other parts of the world in wireless technology. I hope this opens the eyes of many people. Most people have no idea how we compare to the rest of the world, due to the AT&T and Verizon stranglehold. Those two companies buying up all the regional carriers, as well as having incompatible technologies, has lowered functionality and disrupted normal market forces.
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VZW is notorious for charging for everything .. people put up with it due to verizon has outstanding voice quality and good speed for data. As much as you all want LTE it's at least 2 years away to have adequate coverage so Apple needs to either suck it up and make a short term CDMA based iPhone or wait and make a LTE based with CDMA backband so you have coverage anywhere outside of major metro areas. Not to mention you think carriers are going to roll out faster networks and reduce data prices? Bandwidth and buildout cost money - where does this mindset that this should all be as lost cost as possible? Another thread I read on this (as there are hundreds at this point) is you have a group of people that think and react to this from the point of being a computer user and not a cellphone user. To the pc users this pricing is just not something they feel is fair, while the cellphone crowd has been used to it. I'm in the middle - seeing I don't pay a dime for mobile devices or service being a mobile professional I would never pay upwards to $100 a month. My iPhone is sim free and I only use WiFi. My Bold is on at&t and tethering is $10-12 a month last I checked for a user so they are not about to give services other devices charge for free to iPhone users. Apple should just cut ties with everyone - sell the iPhone for cost and force carriers to offer attractive plans to a growing iPhone user base - I doubt it would work or see the sales volume with $500+ devices but then it's a set price and users are free to change devices everytime Apple trots out a new model yearly.
"Just as the old AT&T stifled landline innovation in the 20th century, the new AT&T is stifling wireless innovation in the 21st."
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Until they upgrade their capacity. Maybe it's that simple. Maybe it's not a conspiracy to deprive you.
AT&T has Apple by the balls, and Apple has its fanbois by the balls. All of this complaining is just a smoke screen; they will gladly pay the extortionist prices because they are Apple fanbois and are used to it. In the short term AT&T will rake it in. In the long term, who knows? Businesses today aren't really concerned with the long term anyway. With any luck AT&T HQ will be attacked by Godzilla.
Sheesh, if you don't like AT&T's terms, then don't buy an iPhone. It's not like there aren't alternatives out there that provide nearly the same functionality.
Want to play their games? Use their apps? Get the iPod touch.
As an IT person at an organization that uses iPhones for both phone service and Exchange support, I can state definitively that the instant it is possible to part with AT&T we would do so. They SUCK.
Don't get me wrong, we are happy enough with the iPhones that we will stay with AT&T as long as the exclusive agreement lasts, but listen up AT&T, you are expendable and we would GLADLY drop your ass. We and everyone else is fed up with your BS.
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I'm a Verizon customer. They have HORRID billing practices (throw in lots of ambiguous "fees"
That's another little problem that I'm sure we're all familiar with: all the "taxes" and "fees" on your cell phone bill. Why are they allowed to do that?
If I were running a store and I advertised an item for $50, but when you came in to buy it I said, "Well, it's $50, plus sales tax, plus another $10 to cover various taxes associated with running my store, plus another $5 in fees," what would happen? I would guess I'd get in trouble for false advertising. Yet my $40 cell phone bill always comes out $60. Every single month.
Personally, I've always thought it was kind of silly that advertised prices don't already include sales tax, but cell phone plans definitely take it too far.
My guess is that AT&T won't charge for MMS messages. With every other phone that has MMS messaging, an MMS message is treated like a text message. Each is deducted from your bucket of monthly messages. It's that way for both 'dumb' phones and other PDA-phones. They used to charge separately for text and MMS messages (i.e., 200 text + 20 MMS /month for $5), but they stopped doing that and lumped them together several years ago. Charging more for iPhone users to MMS would be pretty harsh. Not that they wouldn't or couldn't do it, but it would be a step back for them in terms of plans and billing.
Tethering, on the other hand, they absolutely *will* charge for. You can opt for the "official" tethering ability on the Blackberry and other PDA data plans. It costs and additional $30 month (for 5GB of data) on top of the $30/month data plan. Considering that many of these phones have 3G, I see no reason why they'd charge differently for iPhone 3G tethering. Unless, of course, they want to.
I'm not saying that I think it's ok to charge another $30 for "more-unlimited" data. It's asinine. Unlimited data should be unlimited data. And it clearly isn't. But anyway, those "in the know" understand that it's trivial to tether _right now_ with a stock iPhone. Just pick up a Samsung Sync for $25 off eBay. Use it + your iPhone SIM + bluetooth/USB cable to connect to your favorite PC/Mac/Linux machine. Poof. 3G tethering. Yes, it's against the TOS but AT&T historically hasn't cared so long as you don't abuse it. Of course, they could crack down on this if they wanted to.... YMMV + use at your own risk.
I'm sure both are making lots of money and are at least marginally satisfied. The point is who has power in the relationship.
AT&T could tell Apple to screw off, in which case they would lose iPhone exclusivity. Plenty of other carriers would beat Apple's door down to get either future model exclusivity, or at least availabilty on their network.
That would substantially reduce AT&T profit because there are plenty of iPhone users ready to switch carriers, and plenty potential users who won't even consider AT&T but would consider an iPhone on T*mobile or others.
Apple could tell AT&T to screw off and you'd have the same result.
Who has the power in this relationship?
So just to take a dispassionate look at this.
First, AT&T's network supports MMS and tethering just fine. I use connection share on my Windows Mobile smart phone via Bluetooth all the time. No problems. I send MMS on the AT&T network all the time as well. So I'm not sure why there are so many stories that suggest the AT&T network is incapable of doing this. I'm not sure about the HSDPA, but for GPRS... there really isn't any effective way for AT&T to prevent you from using connection sharing. And you can put any GSM phone on their network.
Second, how many iPhones are on AT&T's network? Three and a half million, maybe? With over 75 million subscribers the idea that 4% are going to overload the MMS or GPRS infrastructure is crazy. That stuff is so over-built at AT&T that they hardly sweat. Now, RF capacity might be a different story... but I rarely see any articles even mention that. And its hardly an iPhone specific problem.
AT&T definitely benefits from its deal with Apple. AT&T definitely wants to maintain an exclusive deal. So how could they be dictating to Apple? To me it looks like Apple is the ones who either want rules changed for their benefit or some other concession. You build a phone to the GSMA spec, AT&T can't stop you from allowing people to share the GPRS connection. You can definitely turn MMS service on and off per MSISDN... but it has nothing to do with the device. Why do it?
None of it makes economic sense. Generally, mobile providers are selling phones at a loss or at cost if you don't sign up for a contract. I don't see how AT&T has an interest in crippling Apple phones. All they want is the subscribers. The more people who think an iPhone is good to by... the better.