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AT&T Lowers Data Access To Just $500/GB
GMGruman writes "No doubt in a move to demonstrate how having fewer carriers (once it buys T-Mobile) will be good for US cellular customers, AT&T has announced lower data pricing for customers not on contract: On a per-gigabyte basis, GoPhone users will only pay $500 rather than the previous $5,000. Such a deal. The pricing is indeed lower, but even the best option for such users is five times more than regular customers pay. And given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most."
there isn't an industry in as sore need of regulation
most of all, i am quite tired of paying the same mandated data plan price for rural 2g
...is, of course, a necessity of life (in addition to cable television).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Nobody who is poor or living paycheque to paycheque NEEDS mobile data. I would argue they don't need cell phones at all but that's neither here nor there.
"And given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most." What a silly comment. First, I doubt that people who are poor and use pay as you go generally have smartphones, and if they do, they are far less likely to be data users. Second, we are not at the point where smartphones with data are a can't-exist-without-it commodity. If you are this poor, should you be wasting money on any data plan? Certainly data prices from mobile providers are shockingly high, but this is a silly "think of the children" style fallacious appeal to emotion.
Gasp! The thought of all those poor people who can't afford to use their smart phones, tablets, and netbooks is almost too much to bear... Get a little perspective.
T-mobile web day pass is $1.50/23hr, unlimited access.
Canada:
TELUS: $50/gb
Rogers: $30/gb
Let them charge as much as they want! All the better for companies like MetroPCS and the pay-as-you-go shops. Walmart has a $45 30day unlimited everything plan: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Straight-Talk-Unlimited-Text-Talk-and-Web-Access-30-Day-Service-Card-Email-Delivery/15443344 This isn't discrimination against "the poor and oppressed" like the summary implies, it's more like a stupid tax for someone who can't find a better deal.
"those who can afford the least still pay by far the most."
could perhaps more accurately be written:
"those who typically use the least get charged the most per unit."
or shortened to:
"you save money if you buy in bulk."
Of course, I'm not defending the outrageous rates—just the melodramatic language.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
don't buy it then?
To stop being poor, learn not to spend money you don't have on luxuries you can't afford.
I, for one, applaud AT&T's 90% cut in price. Moar kool-aid please. This stuff is delicious!
Virgin Mobile has two Android phones which get you unlimited data for $25/month. It's far and away the cheapest smart phone data plan in the US. Who cares what T does when we have VM?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Here in New Zealand where we usually get the rough end of the stick with regards to pricing etc. we actually only pay $20 for 1GB of 3G data on "PrePay" (what you would know as "no contract") with a local operator 2degrees - http://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/prepay/mobilebroadband
The Internet is supposed to be only for looking at web pages, no access to actual video or audio content. Want to play a multi-user game? Ha! Not if significant network traffic is required!
250 GB limits on their AT&T U-verse connection (does not apply to your cable subscription). Some have reported upwards of 4000% errors on their data meter (when AT&T's numbers are compared to those collected by DD-WRT routers).
2 GB limits on their data plans for smart phones.
Obviously they already prevent any pre-paid access to the Internet.
I never did hear if they ever disabled the fiber optic splitter they installed so all their traffic went directly to the NSA.
Seriously, these guys are the biggest threats to the Internet yet.
What's sad is that products like the GoPhone target the poor and those living paycheck to paycheck. Because they can't commit to two-year contracts, they pay a lot more for the services than their better-off counterparts. Telecom is hardly the only example of that; banking and credit are other critical areas of daily life where the poor pay more to get less.
Buy a phone at full retail price and sign up for month to month service. Two year contracts are basically just loans so little Timmy can get a shiney iphone to break at a discount. If you are a bit strapped for cash, buy a prepaid phone and use that with a regular plan. Screw your credit up so bad that you can't afford a deposit on service? Well, who's fault is that? I'm only sympathetic to those just getting started who don't have credit histories.
;lkj
The poster makes an issue of pay as you go being what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use.
But for that to be a real issue cell phones and data access would need to be considered a necessity and it is not,
it is a convenience.
And given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most."
Anyone who agrees to AT&T's contract is a moron - or any cell phone provider in the US for that matter.
Those contracts are soooo one sided that the mafia are looking into getting into the cell phone business but they wont because they're afraid of the other providers.
I for one refuse to have a cell phone in my name. When the US cel carriers start being fair to the consumer, then and only then will I consider getting one.
Pay as you go?!? Please! They suck even worse!
US cell carriers are scum - there are no exceptions.
Virgin Mobile USA (part of Sprint) has plan with unlimited data, text and 300 minutes a month prepaid for only $25/month.
NEW: $25 FOR 500MB $5 for 10MB (previously $4.99 for 1MB) $15 for 100MB (previously $19.99)
It is only $500/GB if someone were to sip 10MB at a time. Although the price for the best deal ($50/GB) is still way higher than those on contract.
The problem with pay as you go data in the US and Canada is that tourists visiting have to pay through the nose whether they decide to roam or try to go "pay as you go" during their short trip.
It would be much better if the AT&T and the HSPA carriers in Canada offers day passes for tourists or even some sort of week pass at a reasonable price with a "rental" sim like you can get in Japan.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Don't the poor have better things to do with their money than paying for a smart phone and its associated data plan? You know, things like food, and shelter?
The units are a bit deceptive. We pay $15/250MB data with one-month expiry. If you actually used a GB/month, you'd pay the $35/2GB rate my parents in law pay. (Both prepaid rates, however, not for smart phones, because that's more expensive. Duh, why would you pay the rate intended for the rich guy who doesn't care about his phone bill and just occasionally uses data on his fancy phone he bought to impress his boss?)
That's what I would call pretty expensive, and it's probably a dumb marketing move by AT&T, but putting $/GB units on the most expensive / least data prepaid option is pretty deceptive when actual GB/month data rates are orders of magnitude smaller. Kind of like saying the poorest people can't afford steak, they have to eat hot dogs, and then berating a street hot dog vendor in an upscale neighborhood for their exorbitant prices.
A'la carte prices for small quantities are much higher than bulk rates. Poor people can't afford to buy a'la carte. Film at eleven.
T-Mobile is way cheaper... oh wait...
Remember that market prices are not set based on cost. They are set based on willingness to pay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay). All large corporations set their prices this way, based on economic and business theory.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
I'm really not sure why people still do business with these companies.
At one point in time, a businesses actually CARED about their image, and quality of services.
Somewhere along the line, companies shifted gears and started being driven by levels of financial interest.
While the financial well-being of a company is important, I would argue that the integrity, direction, and quality of product is just as important.
In respect to this view, why are things so lopsided on the financial side?
I would guess to assume that we live in business world that is bankrupt, from at minimum an integrity point of view.
I would have never guessed that any functional business could race to the bottom, in terms of customer satisfaction, product, and quality....
Everyone has choices, at least those of us in the Northern Hemisphere...
Perhaps society needs to look inward, and decide what is most important to ourselves, as consumers. Not everyone has to ride the biggest, fastest, cheapest bandwagon.
_YMMV
.
Nope. It isn't a question of credit; it's a question of payment and price. If the unwashed poor have bad credit and they pay up front with their Go Phone account then they should pay the same rate as anyone else since ATT is incurring no risk by taking their money ahead of time. Or perhaps given the fact that they are prepaying and in fact extending credit to ATT maybe they should pay a little less. Or you could just rip off the poor. You could do that.
The GoPhone does not really target the low income market, there are things like Boost for 50/60 a month unlimited everything. Anyone who actually uses their phone will burn through that much at least with prepaid cards in a given month. It's sorta like a step up from tracphone, something you give as an emergency phone or something to less chatty older folk. Also the plans are somewhat popular for tourists, since it is a pre paid GSM provider instead of a CDMA or iDEN provider. It allows them to use their own phone and (assuming the store you go to will do it, some are asshats and don't) just purchase a SIM Card. In the past T-Mobile was somewhat competitive with GoPhone for that market, but about a year ago they switched more to a servicing low income and bad credit model with the shift to month to month no contract plans. (I forget the specific name they used for it, but basically you did not get a full subsidy on the phone up front, instead you got a partial subsidy and then pay 1/10 the remaining balance over the next 10 months along with your monthly service bill.)
Also -- take a look @ the GoPhone phones, they're friggen ancient old Samsung clamshells with low resolution screens anceint WEP browsers, and in my opinion no real easy way to generate a GB of traffic. This punishes the fools who use a smartphone with gophones pay as you go.
It should also be noted that they offer Pick Your Plan or some crap, which would be somewhat better for a data customer, but really prepaid AT&T is not the way to go if you want to use data on your phone for any real reason besides downloading ringtones and getting box scores from ESPN.
There, fixed that for you.
In your defense, I think everyone read that word with a sarcastic tone of voice anyway. $500/GB is /lower/ ? Surely you must be joking.
And given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most.
So what? It's capitalism! If you can gut the poor (who're probably just lazy, anyway) and make some profit, this isn't just the way it is, it's good and right. Besides, these prices can't be too high. If they were, somebody else would offer lower prices. Didn't anybody teach you about the invisible hand of the free market?
The only thing I see wrong here is that we're unfairly taxing these juggernauts that contribute so much to society. What would we do if Atlas shrugged and decided to not offer these $500/GB plans to us plebs anymore? We really need to show AT&T some love, people. After all, people exist for corporations, not the other way around.
>>pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use
Perhaps Canada is different as far as the efficiency of pay as you go pricing levels (I doubt it),
but I've had a pay-as-you-go phone for years. I buy my phones up front. No contract & pay as I go.
It suits my usage patterns much better than a plan.
And yeah, the data rates are so wrong I can't wrap my head around it. No argument there.
My usage is infrequent and much cheaper with prepaid than with a subscription.
Overseas, I could use prepaid data too: enabling flat-rate data for a period of a day, a week, or a month would deduct from my balance exactly the same cost as post-paid subscription amortized over that period. There was no cost penalty for using prepaid. I did this because my usual data use was to use my work and home Internet connections, but I would enable mobile data on the occasion where I could not, e.g. due to travel or an Internet outage.
This is simply a restricted market in the US, where they are trying to force users to subscribe and pay for service they don't use. All of their pricing structures have the same bundling tricks which force you to pay for things you don't want, in order to get what you do. A competitive market would cause these commodities to be sold unbundled, and the big networks are using monopoly power to avoid that. They don't want to have to compete, as they have dreams of subscriber revenue dancing in their heads.
given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most.
Blah, blah, blah. Let them eat gigabytes. If they didn't suck, they would have a job. If they had a job, they would actually need gigabytes of bandwidth.
"...those who can afford the least still pay by far the most."
That's true almost everywhere in Capitalism.
Have no idea what you are talking about and I would like to know who you think you are to say what "poor" people should and shouldn't be spending their money on?
I was poor for a while after being laid off. I had to look for work and guess how I did it, I used the internet.
You might say "go to the library" but where I lived there was no public transportation so I hooked my pc to my blackberry and submitted my resume ...online. I searched for companies who were hiring...online, I filled out my unemployment worksheet every week...online. I paid my electric bill...online.
The point is, that it's not up to you elitist jackasses to say who should be spending money on what. Back then data access was more of a necessity than it is for me today. You snobs who have never had to do without just mind your own business how other spend their own money,
Here in India, you pay $2.45 for a 1GB chunk. Larger chunks, cost even less. 5GB goes for just over $6!! Pay-as-you-go is all fine if one sticks to small data transfers, but in the long run, is certainly not worth it. Works out to many times the cost.
I understand that fewer players in the market tends to resist cost reduction, but seriously, $500 per GB is ridiculous, right?
What am I missing here?
Geekism is your _only_ God!
I suspect that $50/GB is really not that terrible, comparatively, with month-to-month plans, if it doesn't expire and you can actually use the entire GB you payed for.
I say that, because I'm pretty sure that most folks on month-to-month plants don't really use as much bandwidth as they're paying for every month, and in the end, most of the contract folks are paying at least $50/GB too.
I just got back from an extended international trip and I was startled how expensive GoPhone is compared to prepaid plans from other countries. I use around 200mb of bandwidth on my iPhone for normal usage. Here's an example of what a month of service costs in other countries:
AT&T GoPhone: $75 for 200mb + unlimited calls (there's no other package for data)
Airtel India: $2 for 2gb
China Mobile: $12 for 4x50mb
TrueMove Thailand: $12 for 500mb 3g
Orange Jordan: $7 for 200mb 3g
India and China do not have 3g service. Still, the huge difference in prices has left me scratching my head.
What's ATT's pricing got to do with US Cellular Customers?
I'm a US Cellular customer and although, we at least have a 5GB/month cap, instead of the 2GB/month that other carriers impose, but we still have to pay $30/month for data on our Android smartphones, with $0.25/MB if we go over the 5GB cap, with a max monetary cap of $200/month for exceeding the data plan quota. If we tether, we have to pay an additional $25/month on top of the data plan.
Now, I think these prices are absolutely still outrageous, but does this mean that they're also willing to drop machine-to-machine (web-connected sensors) rates by 90% as well? Christ I hope so...
I'm a 6-figure making Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go (month to month fixed price) customer. I lay out $25/mo for an unlimited data plan and 300 voice minutes. I use the data plan like a rented mule - voice only occasionally.
Only chumps pay more. Cell phone contracts are for the weak-of-mind who think that their modern-day beeper is some kind of status symbol.
If those carriers had any shred of conscience or their customers were intelligent enough to demand this by market force, they'd introduce upper limits on cost, after which the subscription transforms into a low bandwidth flatrate...
The poor need mobile data access? I assume that the rich elite in government will install this mandate, while the middle class pays for it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
AT&Terrible has always sucked! This just goes to demonstrait how much they suck! I am mad as he|_|_ that they are trying to buy t-mobile. I left AT&T for t-mobile because of their terrible pricing and customer service. T-Mobile has competive pricing and the highest customer service rating in the industry hands down. If they succeed in purchasing T-Mobile I will leave and I can assure them that a lot of the customers like me will. T-Mobile's unlimited plan that includes every phone (land lines and cellular), data and text is only $90 a month in my area which is a little more than Sprint but it includes landlines. I know that plan will all go away if AT&T gets their way and that should not be allowed. It clearly will stiffle competition!
Great...T-Mobile offers $1.49 web day pass on their pre-paid phones where you get 30mb over a 24 hours. Comes out to $50/gb. Guess that will change when AT&T buys them out.
Hey that's capitalism for you.
You don't like what you're being charged go elsewhere because to regulate what companies can charge is Marxism.
Or so I've been told by the libertarians, tea baggers, and republicans.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Many are looking at the pricing plans from the wrong perspective. AT&T's goal isn't to charge per bandwidth. They want to split the users into groups based on their intended usage, then charge the perceived value to each group.
$5 for 10 MB targets people with dumb phones who just need simple information like sport scores
$15 for 100 MB is for smart phone users who use it mostly for email
$25 for 500 MB is for smart phone users who casually surf the web
If you want to use more data, AT&T prefers you to get on a post paid plan
You can still argue that the prices are too high, but there is some reasoning to AT&T's pricing model.
500 USD for 1 gigabyte?
This has to be an april fool's.
I can't believe Americans pay that much for data...
A smart phone is not a necessity of life, even for most that work in the tech world. It is primarily a frivolous luxury that ultimately probably degrades the quality of most people's existence rather than enhances it. I'm most certainly saddened by the amazing amount of disconnection it has caused in human interaction, as I stand among people texting, chatting, etc., no matter what they are doing. It removes them from the world they are in, and it is a cold disconnection of humanity that bothers me.
And, besides, almost anybody that requires a prepaid plan falls into one of two categories:
1) They are performing illegal activities i.e., a drug dealer, pimp, or hitman.
2) They have shitty credit for never paying any of their bills
Either way, I don't give a fuck.
I'm on a Clear Spot, 4g only its $40/month, no extra fees. only problem is only in major cities. Ping time is a little slow 30-200ms, usually in the 60-140ms range DL and UL speeds are good. dl speeds are 3-10mbps (1MB/sec dl) and .03- 1mbps ul. usually 5mbps and .9mbps. Clear also offers a 3g/4g mifi for about $55/mo, pre paid or contract. I got my hardware free at BB and use prepaid.
I don't work for either of these places. I don't even work- recession.
"Has anyone else noticed that they are all actually the same industry. The cheap and easy transference of data..."
You've made an ever so slight typo. I think you were trying to say "expensive and intentionally obfuscated".
Keep in mind that they charge these rates even in areas where AT&T Wireless is the /only/ internet provider, such as most of rural Oklahoma and Kansas, and they receive federal money under the FCC's rural broadband program to provide it. Coincidentally, everyone who had an unlimited plan in those areas where AT&T is receiving rural broadband money got booted off and weren't told about this until receiving five-figure data bills.
Furries make the internet go.
LOL. I pay â5.99 / month for an unlimited data plan:P WTF is this shit.
0x or or snor perron?!
I live in central Europe and my smart-phone has a pre-paid card with a 1GB data option enabled for 10 EUR (~14 USD) a month.
That's by far enough for e-mail chat and the occasional map. And I can get rid of it anytime I want (just don't have to extend it for the next month).
I'm always fascinated to hear the comparison from the new world.
So, which telco do you work for?
Furries make the internet go.
couldn't afford FOOD. Who gives a flying rats ass about smart phone rates for the poor.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
Usage based billing for the internet is absurd. Here's an example to illustrate that.
If I download 100 GB always at 5pm - 8pm over a month, I'm sure many will proclaim that I am some kind of bandwidth hog since I'm downloading an 'excessive' amount of data during prime time. If too many people do this it could slow down the internet for fellow members, right? At least some people would be convinced by this argument.
If I download 100GB always at 3am - 6am over a month, I will probably not cause any noticeable problems. At the very least, downloading this much at non-peak, or even low usage times results in much less of a problem.
With Usage Based Billing, I will always be charged the same amount. And thus the absurdity.
In the past we have always paid for internet via the size of the pipe, not how much data comes through. Only by presenting improper metaphors, such as comparing to commodity based usage, have the ISPs twisted the arguments into charging for the wrong value.
The reason that many people use a prepaid cell phone plan is because they need/use it, and it's cheaper for them. The reason that many people prefer contract plans is that with the amount (and features) that they use, it's cheaper for them. You don't think that someone who uses a lot of data on their phone, no matter what their income level, might notice that they'd save money if they switched to a contract plan? Or are you suggesting that low-income people are just too stupid to read a bill, and can't help but be hoodwinked?
The data rates for GoPhones may be exorbitantly high. You might argue that they're too high, and I won't disagree. But this stuff about income levels is all sorts of bullshit. What if AT&T decided to charge a million dollars per gigabyte? Would you lament the fate of those poor indigent souls forced to pay millions of dollars to watch YouTube videos on their phones? Or would you simply expect them to either get contracts, or go somewhere else?
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
"And given that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most."
Well, let's see here. Between my wife and I, we earn over $150,000/year. We also use GoPhone service. Why? Because we don't yik-yak on the phone all day long and understand that just because one CAN yik-yak on the phone over the most trivial of matters, it isn't really necessary.
Between the two of us, we spend less than $200/year on phone service with GoPhone. Compare that with the $80/month or whatever you people are spending on your iPhones.
Not everyone who uses prepaid service is poor or credit-impaired.
literally that is. dont excuse the rough wordage - screwed is not enough for this :
in turkey, up to 6 gb is $30, and per each 1 gb afterwards they charge $30 afterwards. (over the 6 gb quota)
we have 4 mobile carriers. there are those among them who even provide cheaper. you people are really, really being fucked in the apex of fine capitalism. in the land of the free. ill remember this next time when a right wing republican or libertarian or something blabbers about 'free market' in america to me.
oh boy. hahahaa.
Read radical news here
I was surprised when some guy from my phone company called me. I was sure that it was yet another one of those completely useless annoying spam calls asking me to switch providers. (Yeah, even though it was from my own provider I was almost sure they just hadn't realized I actually used them. The only spam calls I get are from mobile providers, I should look into that do-not-call list some day.) Luckily they immediately announced that they have some good stuff coming. A little bit later they said that the good stuff included decreasing my 29.xx EUR per month internet plan to just about 11 EUR per month. And then some other pointless crap that is useless to me but still lowers my bill by a few cents anyway.
I have a Tracfone Samsung slide phone w/ web access for emergency or must use needs. I use about $30 worth of time every 3 months. If I had a phone with data plan in my area I would pay $75 per month. If you are a light smart phone user like I am you save a ton of money. If you use a huge amount of airtime & data it makes sense to get a phone with a contract and data plan.
Suck.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Prepaid 3G on Sprint's network: $25 / month, 300 minutes, unlimited data.
To blog is sublime
I don't know how long this will last but $25 per month for 300 minutes and unlimited data and texts and no contract is a good deal. Around here the coverage is no worse than AT&T. They started offering an android 2.2 phone a few months ago and it has been hard to get in the stores around here.
While this story will generate a lot of deserved flaming against AT&T, remember that AT&T is not the company known as AT&T. AT&T is the company that bought the name of the company formerly known as AT&T. Forty and more years ago there was plenty of criticism about that company formerly known as AT&T, but its subsidiary accomplished a bunch of useful things like inventing the transistor, Unix, and digital audio.
After I buy the names, you can call me either Abraham Lincoln or Alfred Einstein.
It costs a lot to be poor. Poor people are not a particularly fertile demographic for marketing, and so many deals are aimed at wealthy people.
"You don't like what you're being charged go elsewhere because to regulate what companies can charge is Marxism."
Actually, that's exactly what it is.
Reference the mass exodus of power companies in California.
If it costs x+2 to manufacture something, and the (state) government mandate you charge x-1 per unit, as a business, you leave.
Has AT&T's common carrier status been revoked yet?
If not my dear FCC, why doesn't my voice--that of a common citizen and common tax payer--have any sway with you when it comes to the common carrier's pricing of my telecommunications systems?
How can I, someone of limited financial means, lobby you to listen to me?
The poor really don't need to be using too much bandwidth, unless it's to access job search sites. They're probably spending most of their money on guns and drugs anyway, so AT&T and others are probably doing us all a favor by taking a couple more dollars out of their pockets.
AT&T Ripoff As You Go? :)
the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most
My kids have "low resources". Their data plan is like the one described in this post. So they've disabled data access.
In the end they still pay much less than I do for my "high-end mobile plan"
When I was a kid I could live without a computer, a mobile phone and the Internet.
My kids have all of this, except data on the mobile. Should they cry about that?
What I mean is those outrageous data plans can be understood as "no data plans", and not "high prices for the poor".
Optus Australia had (until a few months ago) plans that were 15 cents per KB over the limit. I'm on one, with 500mb of data allowance... heaven help me if I go over that.
Thanks for restating something I've been saying for a long time: If the Internet is a series of tubes, well, then, let it be a series of tubes already!
Build the tubes, then let private carriers (AT&T, Joe Bob Internet, etc.) pull their wires through.
No monopoly, and also no ugly wires on telephone poles that get homeowners' associations angry.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I pay £25/mo (which given how shitty the US currency is == $40/mo - that sounds pricey). Anyway. Cheap and cheerful. 2000texts, 1500minutes/texts (if i eat up the 2000), free voicemail, free incoming calls and SMS (yeah that's right in the EU we don't pay to receive calls/sms - doing that would be fucking stupid) and uncapped internet (depending on the area and population saturation i've had this go up as far as 3Mb/s). It's natted, but what the hell can you expect with the half arsed infrastructure mobile networks have in place. Most networks here cap you at a gig a month (only three is currently doing unlimited) on tariffs starting as low as £15/mo (depending on handset).
I even get 60mins of video call a month (to everyone but iPhone users) and free calls to people on the same network. I live in the UK and the networks here are pretty shitty. You guy's in the US are getting _FUCKED_
News like this make me feel a lot better because I've always thought Polish rates were high. The very basic rate in Play is 1 GB for $100 for (prepaid) . But if you top up for $10 you get extra 1.91 GB (2GB total, $5/GB) and 3.84 GB (4 GB total) if you pay $17 ($4.25/GB). They also offer a starter kit (modem+sim+31GB valid for a year) for $160 ($5.16/GB). Prices for data transfer to a smartphone with a "voice" SIM (you can use the "data" SIM to talk but the voice rates are ridiculous) are also quite reasonable compared to the numbers you give ($8.33/GB if you buy 1GB smaller amounts cost more).
Sometimes it really cheers me up to hear some news from the other side of "the lake" ;-)
This is pretty much the case across the board. Keep the poor...poor, so the rich can stay rich. Its gotten so bad in this country that I've started to catch myself playing along. Not only do the poor pay higher rates when they can get credit, they pay higher for everything AND they are the main workforce. So not only do the poor people pay more for what they have, they MADE what they can't afford to buy. I feel that this has been exemplified by the current federal budget debates. While a bunch of rich politicians debate what to do to keep the federal government running 800, 000 people are scared to death that they will be the next to lose their jobs. In my humble opinion that is not governing and is NOT acceptable.
Owning a smart phone with a data plan isn't a human right. Don't want to pay that much for the data plan? Don't. Live without it. Billions do it every day.
BULLSHIT!!!! Try slapping an AT&T SIM into an unlocked smartphone and see what happens. I guarantee that within 10 minutes of connecting to a BTS, you WILL get a text saying that an unwanted data plan has been added to your account. It doesn't matter if the phone is configured for data or not, as soon as an IMEI shows up that matches a qualifying smartphone, they are going to slam you into a data plan.
You then have to wait until the end of the billing cycle and contest this with customer service to have the unwarranted charges removed from your bill. Even if you request that data NEVER get added to your bill, eventually it will happen again!
iven that pay-as-you-go pricing is what the poor and people living paycheck to paycheck use, the result is those who can afford the least still pay by far the most.
Nobody and I mean Nobody *needs* a wireless data plan. Its nice to have but you can certainly get by without one. Its not like it puts you at a real disadvantage in most cases either. That might change someday in the future but right now not having a web browser in your pocket does not yet deny a person many economic opportunities.
A carrier is a business there is far more administrative overhead in dealing with month to month customers and they lose the benefit of certainty about continuing revenue. They absolutely should charge more for contract free plans.
Finally if a person's financial situation is such that they can't work a cellular contract MRC into your budget than you should probably not be allocating any of their evidently limited means to wireless data, its was probably better when they were totally priced out.
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people who live paycheck-to-paycheck are usually pretty stupid about their finances. They shouldn't even have smartphones - they are not a right nor mandated. Let's not make victims out of those who simply make poor decisions.
but it seems several other countries have far better cell/internet services then our own. Not to mention lower monthly service charges and better coverage. Maybe someone should actually try thinking of the enduser then the profit margin.
Joe Investor