AT&T Expects Data-Only Phone Plans Within 2 Years

An anonymous reader writes "AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said today that he expects wireless carriers to start offering data-only cellphone plans within the next 24 months. 'Analysts see such plans as a logical extension of trends in wireless technology. Smartphones with data service can already use it for Internet phone calls and texting through services such as Skype. Phone calls are also taking a back seat to other things people do with their smartphones. AT&T has been recording a decline in the average number of minutes used per month.' He says there isn't a specific plan in the works — he just think it's inevitable."

Comments

Expensive limited plans

[nurb432]

Now you see the real reason they are killing off unlimited plans. they know that data is the future and want to screw us as much as they can.

Thankfully if you manage to find wifi access most of the time you can avoid being raped on 'voice' service, and not use much of the soon to be like gold data ...

Re:Expensive limited plans

[ottothecow]

Because the real issue is not packets but concurrent bandwidth.

This is not a commodity problem like molecules of water flowing through a pipe or electrons moving down a wire (although electricity does have a little bit of a dual issue with respect to concurrent use since power generation has to be ramped up or down to meet demand). If you send or receive a packet at 3AM when nobody else is using the lines, it doesn't matter. What matters are those packets you want to send and receive at 5PM in the city when everybody is trying to stream pandora or watch a youtube clip on their commute home.

If you aren't going to support unlimited, its actually kind of a hard problem to solve. Things that made sense with the voice paradigm--local calls being free since there are lots of local interconnects while long distance calls were charged per minute since they only had a limited number of lines in and out of your community--don't make sense in the digital age of packets and little chunks (since you don't need continuous monopoly over a piece of wire). Any sort of price put on data transfer is not related to the cost of sending a packet at all, it is merely an attempt to thwart usage to a point where peak usage is less than peak capacity.

Re:Expensive limited plans

[icebike]

Because the real issue is not packets but concurrent bandwidth.

But that problem has been solved already, time and time again.

Off peak electricity can be had cheaper than peak, with a different meter.
Off peak phone calls essentially become free (nights and weekends).
Off peak express/toll lane use is cheaper than peak use.

Demand period billing is easily managed in an industry where you know precisely the time of day that every packet transited the wire.

The problem comes in the uncertainty of the bill at the end of the month. People can budget their $30 bucks or $60 bucks, but how do you budget demand period adjusted usage? Yes, newer phones these days have the ability to keep track of this usage built right in, but the risk of a few dollars overage charge is deterring people from using their phones the way they want.

The whole concept of the need for demand period based billing and data caps is, I suspect, pretty much of a fraud. The carriers aren't even deploying all of the bandwidth they licensed, and regardless of Verizon's protestations to the contrary, they are simply hording it to justify high prices. I suspect that a complete analysis would show that there is plenty of bandwidth even for peak periods, and it is being artificially constrained.

We went through all of this before with the telephone companies. Its not exactly like they have been playing straight with us up to this point. Its the same game they played on us with "scarcity of long distance circuits". Now I don't know a single person that pays long distance charges. Its free with your basic phone service in most places.

 

Oh, but don't worry.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

They'll be twice as expensive to make up for that phone bill you're not paying.
Can't have your bill going down now!

Opposite Direction of Where I Thought It Would Go

[syntap]

I speculated some time ago that voice minute usage will dwindle down to the point where they would be offered as unlimited on all plans eventually, with the plan levels (tiering) moved from minutes used to data used. Part two was right, but I didn't really expect a movement toward data-only plans.

By the way those aren't new, before everyone had smartphones those of us with Blackberries and older units could get data-only plans.

In other words

[joeflies]

it'll be just like the way that data plans for the iPad work today?? Amazing, he must be able to see the future! It has to be getting cheaper, not more expensive though. An Optus prepaid data plan in Australia costs a $20 for 2 gigs of data. With Skype IP-based text message, you pretty much have voice & text covered. Now compare that to how much AT&T charges for data, voice & text.

Cheaper?

[daniel78]

Since it won't include all those bundled minutes and SMS messages, its going to be much cheaper than current "everything" plans right? right??

Why do i have a nagging suspicion that it won't be...

Not interested.

[SeaFox]

I'd rather have a voice-only plan for smartphones.

Re:Not interested.

[afidel]

Or, for the same $35 you could get unlimited data and text on Virgin Mobile and use Skype/Google Voice (or if you're like most people just live with the 300 minutes a month, overages are only $.10/minute so unless you talk more than 5 hours a month regularly it's damn cheap).

Re:Not interested.

[hendridm]

I'd rather have a voice-only plan for smartphones.

Really? The thing I least like to receive on my phone is an actual phone call. Send me an e-mail so I can deal with you when I feel like it ._.

Data only plan

[rjejr]

But the data only plan will cost as much, probably more, than a calling plan and data plan combined. And if you buy a cellphone w/o a calling plan the smartphone is called a "tablet", not a phone. I'm sorry, it just isn't a phone anymore. I use my iPod Touch all the time for phone calls - Google Voice combined with some random Talk app I found" - but I never call it a phone. Because it isn't a phone.

Plans

[Adriax]

Available in 50($50), 500($100), and 1000MB($150) plans, with incredibly low overage fees ($1 per kb).

Addons include a standard messaging plan ($0.20/instant message, messages sent determined by taking your used bandwidth and dividing my the average text message size).
Automatic enrollment in their streaming media plan (only $50/month to stream from any source you currently subscribe to).
And a set of voice packages of 100($20), 200($35), and 500($50) minutes ($1/minute overage fees, minutes used determined by taking your total bandwidth used and dividing by the average VoiP bandwidth usage rate).

I'd buy it

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I'd buy it. The idea of my mobile phone being merely one more extension hanging off the Asterisk system I have installed at home is VERY appealing. Yes, I know, there are all sorts of edge cases (home phone is down, there's an emergency, blah blah blah) and Slashbots love to be stupidly pedantic about edge cases, but by and large this is the kind of thing a lot of people want -- an "extremely cordless phone" that is part of the voice plan (and phone number) they already have. Bring it on.

Re:another no-brainer

[pbjones]

sorry, there are already data only plans for iPads, etc... AT&T is behind the ball.

Re:2 years?

[ZeroSumHappiness]

I believe ATT knows about these things called IMEI numbers and in the past has used them to stop people from buying prepaid phones to replace broken phones instead of having to resign a contract.

Re:So why not offer them?

[nurb432]

You are new here aren't you. You are here for the company, not the other way around, now give me your damned wallet and shut up.

They're called "plans for the hearing-impaired"

[emarkp]

I had one from T-Mobile for quite a while. You could still talk for a high per-minute price. Since I rarely used it as a phone, it was a good deal. Since then I've added voice on the monthly plan so I don't know if they still offer the plans.

Uh.... like the existing iPad plans?

[belphegore]

I guess the dude never heard of his own company's iPad plans, which are ALREADY DATA ONLY

Re:Uh.... like the existing iPad plans?

[tepples]

Perhaps the news is that AT&T isn't going to slam customers to a voice and text plan if they happen to insert the SIM into a device whose IMEI says "phone".