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Why AT&T Should Dump the iPhone's Unlimited Data Plan
Pickens writes
"Farhad Manjoo has a provocative story at Slate asserting that while the iPhone has prompted millions of people to join AT&T, it has also hurt the company's image because all of those customers use their phones too much, and AT&T's network is getting crushed by the demand. The typical smartphone customer consumes about 40 to 80 megabytes of wireless capacity a month, while the typical iPhone customer uses 400 MB a month. As more people sign up, local cell towers get more congested, and your own phone performs worse. He says the problem is that a customer who uses 1 MB a month pays the same amount as someone who uses 1,000 MB, and the solution is tiered pricing. 'Of course, users would cry bloody murder at first,' writes Manjoo. 'I'd call on AT&T to create automatic tiers — everyone would start out on the $10/100 MB plan each month, and your price would go up automatically as your usage passes each 100 MB tier.' He says the key to implementing the policy is transparency, and that the iPhone should have an indicator like the battery bar that changes color as you pass each monthly tier. 'Some iPhone fans will argue that metered pricing would kill the magic of Apple's phone — that sense of liberation one feels at being able to access the Internet from anywhere, at any time. The trouble is, for many of us, AT&T's overcrowded network has already killed that sense, and now our usual dealings with Apple's phone are tinged with annoyance.'"
so at&t adds fake fees and deceptively labels them as government taxes?
You changed my wording, I said 'government tax' like fee. And yes, they do.
The exact wording on a bill was "Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge".
This is in addition to:
* Federal Universal Service Charge
* Texas Universal Service Charge
Keep in mind that these are separate from the actual tax section of the bill and are not counted in the total contract monthly charge, they are added on top of that.
do you think that might get them in a bit of trouble?
No it does not.
sheesh
Indeed.
Sprint has the Pre and Hero and it's damn near impossible to spend more than $70/mo. That gets you unlimited mobile calls, data, text, gps, tv. The only way to spend more is if you spend more than 450 minutes a month calling landlines before 7pm. AT&T's base iPhone plan is $70 with no texts, favorite numbers, or gps, and the free nights start at 9pm.