AT&T Introducing Verizon-Style Shared Data Plans

zacharye writes with news of some exciting rate changes for folks on ATTWS. From the article: "AT&T on Wednesday announced the upcoming availability of new shared data plans. Following Verizon's lead, AT&T's new plans will allow subscribers to share data between family members and also between devices. Dubbed 'AT&T Mobile Share' plans, the new offerings start at $40 per month plus $45 per device for unlimited voice minutes and messaging and 1GB of data, and top out at $200 plus $30 per device for unlimited voice and texts plus 200GB of data..." My favorite part is where you pay per-device and get nothing in return.

Comments

Oy

[Daddy-Oh]

I had high hopes that Verizon's shared data would be the right thing for my family plan. None of need 2GB of data a month - we could easily share that. But, the new plan actually costs significantly more.

And, the unlimited voice has no value to me - we never reach our limit on the shared smallest family plan now.

Angry (er).

Re:Oy

[HarrySquatter]

None of need 2GB of data a month - we could easily share that. But, the new plan actually costs significantly more.

Because you were naive enough to think these plans were to save you money rather than make the telecoms more money?

Re:Oy

[PopeRatzo]

You have no idea what the term capitalism means.

Sure I do. It means you make money by having money, and that having money is worth more than working.

This is why investors pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than workers. The idea being a pile of money is worth more than the labor of the people who are actually making stuff.

When you actually look at if for a while, you start to see how it's not sustainable and how it will inevitably end with a very few really rich guys and everybody else with very little money or power.

As Merriam Webster puts it,

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

The main problem being that there is no such thing as a free market. Remember, the people who came up with the idea of capitalism also believed in perpetual motion machines and transmuting lead into gold via purification.

Re:Oy

[poetmatt]

This just in:

existing cell phone plans don't get cheaper with time - they go up with additional fees and cramming.

Re:Oy

[tripleevenfall]

Right, we are all familiar with the model - much like AT&T's previous bait and switch with the data plans.

1. We offer unlimited data!
2. We are introducing limited data plans as an option, unlimited still available!
3. We're phasing out unlimited plans, but users who have an unlimited plan can keep the plan!
4. Users with unlimited plans have to choose a limited plan, but don't worry, very few people exceed it and incurr the pornographic overage fees
5. (over time, content changes requiring users to use more data to get the same content, and fees ratched up 'naturally'

So based on that, the future is....?

1. We offer shared data plans! (if you pay obscene fees that render this a non-money-saver)
2. We're phasing out any other form of data plan.
3. We're doing things to your wallet that you can usually only see in a barnyard, due to your inability to control data usage simultaneously for 5 people.

Re:Oy

[KingSkippus]

Sure I do. It means you make money by having money, and that having money is worth more than working. This is why investors pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than workers. The idea being a pile of money is worth more than the labor of the people who are actually making stuff.

You just made my day, knowing that there's someone else out there who "gets it." It is a source of endless frustration to me, the notion that a lot people out there have, that making money off of having money should be taxed at a lower rate than actually working. It drives me friggin' nuts when this is pitched as "class warfare" or "wealth envy." It is not wealth envy to expect people to pay at least the same tax rate--possibly even more--on money made off of having money versus actually working for it.

Yes, I do believe that there's class warfare going on, but it's not the lower- or middle class that's instigating it; it's the wealthy who are constantly looking for new ways to get out of paying taxes, getting "bailouts", getting subsidies, all the while complaining about the audacity of a poor person wanting health care.

I know I'll probably be modded down as Flamebait, and truth be known, I probably should be because I know it's a touchy topic. Still, I wanted you to know that you are very, very right and I wish there were more people out there who recognized how insane, unethical, and unsustainable the capital gains tax rate is. (Meanwhile, some people are actually pushing for it to be zero, go figure.)

Re:Oy

[Vancorps]

I like your optimism that the American dream is still alive but you're also delusional if you don't think the lower income people are under full assault right now. Rather than set taxes to pre-Bush era the fight is simply to cut programs that were created and solvent prior to the Bush tax cuts which Obama extended. Given the amont of rhetoric coming from the Republican party which has a significant amount of influence over what is going on these days, I find it hard to just scoff at the idea that lower income people aren't being taken advantage of. When tax disparity is as high as it is these days it's really hard to draw another conclusion.

Also, as someone who started his own business more than a decade ago and I pretty easily state that it is significantly harder to start up and become successful these days. Unless you start with money it is becoming an NBA allstar odds type of game. Sure, it still happens but it's few and far between, like people that drop out of college and become billionaires.

Most of the time big money comes from other big money. Look at yesterdays story about the people behind Dragon Dictate. They got swollowed up by large coprorations that simply raped them. They aren't alone in this practice.

The post-WW2 era was about major prosperity and growth. Since the late 90s it has been about globalizing infrastructure and socializing losses. When you or I make a bad investment we lose our investment, when Sheldon Ayers does, he changes the laws and fixes the reason he didn't make money and then not only loses nothing but gains billions.

Wake up! Rich people aren't evil, they are just given too much power and do what anybody with too much power does.

Re:Oy

[hazydave]

It is the density of towers... but It's not just the towers. AT&T and Verizon both have 850MHz for voice and data, and 700MHz for 4G, which propagate better, not to mention not getting so attenuated by buildings, forests, etc. (AT&T does need 1900MHz for one direction on their 3G connection). Sprint and T-Mo have only the 1900MHz channel for voice and Sprint's 3G. Sprint put WiMax at 2500MHz, which is worse yet... T-Mo's 3G is at 1700MHz and 2100MHz, so less robust. Sprint's putting their LTE at 800MHz, on the old Nextel frequency, so things may eventually get better with them... but that's a couple of years off, I suspect. And data only right now.

AT&T has also had a tower problem in some areas. When Cingular bought AT&T's mobile phone division, they nixed the old DAMPS system and put the whole company on GSM. But DAMPS had better range per cell. So in some areas, you have coverage that's spottier than it was intended to be, simply because of this (I'm sure they filled in extra cells in cities to deal with this, but it's still an issue in rural areas... one of the reasons AT&T drops more calls, the other being issues with the way GSM 2G does cell handoffs).

Re:Oy

[PoolOfThought]

We call this force "inheritance"...

Hate to burst your bubble here, but most millionaires today are self made, first generation. They worked hard to get where they are, many of them "laboring" and saving. According to Thomas J. Stanley's book, "The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy," only 20% of millionaires inherited their riches. The other 80% are what you'd call nouveau riche: first-generation millionaires who earned their cash on their own. Many millionaires simply worked, saved, and lived within their means to generate their wealth -- think accountants and managers: regular people going to work every day. Most millionaires didn't get their riches overnight when a rich relative died -- they worked for the money. Can you believe it? They didn't steal it and they didn't inherit it! Amazing

When Mitt Romney can casually suggest that you make yourself rich by starting a business by borrowing twenty grand from your parents, without even realizing that not everyone has that kind of credit limit at The Bank Of Mom And Dad, we've slipped.

What Romney said was an idea. Many people do have that option... even if not all do. And many of them have the option because mom and dad worked so that their kids might have that option. I think it was a stupid idea either way. Borrowing money is generally asking for trouble. The businesses I've been involved in (all small) have started with nothing but ideas, not cash. They've bootstrapped themselves up to a semblance of success, but by no means make their owners rich - yet. It just means using your time to make you richer as opposed to using it to make someone else richer (staring at the tube - often for a fee).

I was told that all men were created equal, that you shouldn't have more rights just because of who your parents were. I thought this place was founded on that idea. Then I realized we only got rid of the formal titles.

So the work you do to make better lives for your family should be reset to zero when you die? Please tell me you've got some way to make it so that when I eventually get rich by working my ass off I have some way to leave it to my kids (or whoever I choose to leave it to). I already teach my kids how to live within their means and use their resources wisely. I'd trust them with the money much more than I'd trust my great uncle sam or any of those who choose to depend on him for their well being.

Re:Oy

[PopeRatzo]

Capital Gains: Corporate Income Tax is paid, then Capital Gains Tax is paid, then the remaining is Spending Money*

Now now...I take the money I made last year via capital gains (the money I worked for before I retired in 2007 is already spent, let's say). I have NOT "already paid taxes on it when it was earned" except for the 15% capital gains tax (which can easily be reduced). I invest it in derivative instruments - options, like that. None of that money ever gets invested in a corporation or in any way goes to "creating jobs". Derivatives account for several times the amount of money in the actual equities market and it's just a betting pool.

I do nothing but listen to a radio show in the morning and make a few trades. I don't use money "that has already been taxed" and I don't pay corporate taxes. I'm paying half the tax rate as the guy who picks up my garbage, except I can use IRAs and other tax exempt instruments to avoid it. Now, I have a limit to how much I can put into my IRA (yet, somehow Mitt Romney has an IRA worth over $100,000,000.00).

Don't tell me that there's is anything like a good reason why the money I make in those 20 minutes I spend at 6am listening to a radio show and making a few trades online deserves to be treated better tax-wise than the money made by a guy who is out in 105 F weather picking up garbage cans all day.

The worst thing about the current metastasized capitalism we have now is what it does to the moral compass of people like you. It appears that you just can't tell the difference between right and wrong any more.

Sad, but we let them do this.

[Tufriast]

AT&T was shitty before this point, but now they are no longer even TRYING to mask the fuckening. What's worse is that they have court backing. You can thank all of the "conservative" leaning judges who side with businesses from a legal angle that made this happen. I'd like to point out that left leaning judges are also a bad thing in the long haul. Hell, judges should lean neither way. In any event, a special thanks to the American people for getting us raped and smiling while doing it.

Re:Sad, but we let them do this.

[alen]

so go prepaid. you can get "unlimited" data for $30 a month if you're willing to buy your own phone. and with the iphone about to have its 6th generation released there isn't much different every year so it's not like you have to run out and buy a new phone every year to keep up with specs

most games will play on 2-3 year old phones
email, evernote and facebook don't need dual core
in fact 99% of what the phone does is OK on a single core. i could play MP3's 15 years ago on mobile CPU's so it's not like you need multiple cores to read email and listen to music.

don't listen to the idiots at anandtech who keep dreaming that you need the latest and greatest to do simple things and you will have money. these were the same idiots who were telling people 10 years ago that you needed a $300 graphics card just to run the Windows GUI "fast"

Re:Sad, but we let them do this.

[nitehawk214]

Yeah, your smug "scare quote laden" impressions are incorrect. Go look at StraightTalk, or the prepay plan from T-Mobile that has 100 minutes and unlimited SMS and data. Sure, it's TMo so you don't have 3G out in Centralia, PA. As Winston Wolfe said, "move out of the sticks, gentlemen!"

So people wont move out of town because it has been on fire for 50 years , but will move if it doesnt have 3G coverage. Sounds typical, and sounds like a lot of my efforts at SimCity.

AT&T bugs me

[medcalf]

Carriers incur no cost for tethering (and soon for Fcae Time over cell), because the data used still comes out of the amount paid for. Carriers incur no cost for messages, because they are part of the phone's sync to the tower, or in the case of iMessages, come out of the data plan. But AT&T charges (very high) fees for messages and tethering, and soon will for Face Time apparently, in addition to the data that they use being paid for. Thing is, I'd use far more text messages, and periodically use tethering, and periodically use Face Time over cell when it's available, and all of these would drive up my data usage and thus make AT&T money. But instead, I just don't use the features, which is slight inconvenience to me, but on net must be a heck of a hit to AT&T shareholders, because their company is leaving money on the table by continuing to insist on pricing services like it was the mid-1980s.

Got to love that competition

[Dyinobal]

Ya got to love this competition that drives these major cellular companies to offer prices that are very competitive and it seems they are always trying to out do each other with their outrageous deals.

Re:Saves nothing, really.

[h4rr4r]

You think there will be less than $15 in taxes and "fees"?

I bet that $265 becomes $300 after all is said and done.

I'm glad I switch carriers

[madhatter256]

For individual users this "bucket" plan is similar to the old plan. But seriously, this stuff is getting expensive with the big carriers. I switched from ATT to verizon years ago because I hated getting dropped calls. Never happened again in Verizon. Then I got their unlimited data and a smart phone. It was awesome and fast. Then they started capping their data and I upgraded the phone which did not grandfather me into their unlimited data plan. That's when things started to down hill... very fast.

That's when I realized I was paying way too much. I was paying $80/month for 2gig data, 350minutes and 500 txt message limit. I could pay over $100 for unlimited texting alone but everything else the same.

It was getting ridiculous and 3G was just getting slower for me because verizon would cap your speed if you went over 200mb!!! They said it was to help with people from going over the 2gig limit and to get the full speed again you have to go through a month where your data usage was less than 200mb... which basically meant you had to not use your phone at all for a month and still pay for it...

So, I switched to Virgin Mobile.

Yes, I paid $300 for my HTC Evo V 4g 3D phone, but the fact that it comes with no contract and a minimum $35/month bill for 350 minutes and unlimited texting and data* *they cap the speed if you go over 2.5gigs but once you pay that $35 phone card the limit is reseted. If you plan on having the phone for 2 years, that totals to $12.5 a month for paying the phone, which makes $35 + $12.5 = $47.5, which is still far cheaper than any plan out there from ATT, Sprint or Verizon (and TMobile). Plus you can buy the prepaid cards and not pay tax on them, so that's a true, flat $35/month payment.

Re:Sharing?

[Mitreya]

Nearly no one wants an unlimited call/txt plan. 100 of each would be more than enough for me.

You are forgetting young people (teenagers, mostly). Each of my nephews and my younger sister can go through a 20-30 texts per day without trying hard.

Most likely going to save me money

[Tauvix]

This is most likely going to save me money. I can see where someone with only 3 phones on their account potentially wouldn't save any money with this, but I have 6 on mine. Because of existing AT&T rules, I can only have up to 5 phones per voice plan. So I currently end up with 2 voice plans.

By the time I'm done, we have the following structure:
$90/month plan w/ 1 additional $10/month phone (1400 minutes, and yes, the people on this plan regularly get close to that)
$70/month plan w/ 1 additional $10/month phone (700 minutes)
5 $30/month unlimited data plans (the average usage per month over the last year being about 1.2GB per month, per user)
1 $25/month 3GB plan
2 $30/month family unlimited texting/mobile-to-any-mobile plans.

Before taxes and add-ons like phone insurance, and my company discount, I currently pay $415/month.

By switching to the new structure it'd look like this (before taxes, add-ons, and discount):
$120 10GB/month plan (including unlimited voice and texting)
6 $30/month phone connection fee

$300/month. I'm going to save $115/month by switching to these plans, and if 10GB/month isn't enough, I can upgrade to the 15GB/month plan for another $40, and STILL save a bunch.

Is this a good deal for everyone? No. But in my situation, I believe it will be a good deal for my family (yes, everyone on my plan is related to me) of all adults, who are mostly around WiFi, half of whom are power users, and half of whom are normal users.

Also, before anyone pops up with "You should go prepaid!" I looked into going prepaid. While certainly it would work for 1 or 2 of my family members, the coverage for Sprint (which Virgin rides on) is crap in my area, and some of my family regularly travels to Canada, which - the last time i checked - is problematic. Some of that may have changed (certainly not the Sprint coverage - people complain constantly in my office), I admit, but I appear to be one of the few people with AT&T who has never experienced a problem with customer service, coverage, or data speeds.

Re:Sharing?

[Tauvix]

$40/mo bill for services + $45/mo premium for phone ownership = $85/mo (for a single device)

This is to the exclusion of all the excise fees, taxes, and other miscellaneous bullshit telcos charge customers; I foresee a single device costing well over $100/mo on this new plan.

This plan isn't for someone with a single phone. Nowhere has anyone said they're eliminating Individual plans, or existing family talk plans. This is for large groups, with a diverse set of devices.

If you have a single phone, stick with your Individual plan. If you have 2-3 people, stick with a Family Talk plan.