AT&T Raises Data Prices

[Craig Horlacher]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://consumerist.com/2012/01/att-hikes-data-plans-caps-and-costs.html' target='_blank'>http://consumerist.com/2012/01/att-...-and-costs.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>According to AT&amp;T's official release, new smart phone customers will have a choice of three new monthly data plans&mdash;300MB for $20, $30 for 3GB, and $50 for 5GB, including the ability to share the wireless data connection with other devices.</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/adt/auto/1326992821.usr309.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Sure they're giving you another 1GB for $5 a month but most people don't use more than 1GB a month so the 2GB for $25 was a better option.&nbsp; If they offered a 1GB plan for $10 or even $15 a month that would be great and work for the vast majority of smartphone users.&nbsp; I'm sure that will never happen though.&nbsp; What are your thoughts?&nbsp; How much bandwidth do you use in a typical month?</p>

[Sven Johannsen]

How much bandwidth do you use in a typical month?
Good question. Oddly enough, I've actually done some analysis. Over the past 12 months I have exceeded 200M, 7 times, but never exceeded 400M. I have the 2G plan for $25/month, which comes out to $300. The 200M plan is $15, and they charge you $15 for each 200M you go over. So I would have 5 months at $15 ($75) plus 7 months at $30 ($210) for a total of $285. So AT&T made money on me because I prefer not to worry about my usage and have consistant bills. If I had gone over 1 more time it would have been break even, 4x$15 + 8x$30 ($300). Curently then, as long as you stay under 400M, you can go over your 200M, 2 out of 3 months and break even between the 200M and 2G plans.

Could do the same math with the $20, 300M plan, knowing I only went over 300M twice in the last 12 months. New rate structure would be 10x$20 + 2x$40 ($280). Fairly comparable, but opting for the next tier would now be 12x$30 ($360).

I am of course also paying for the basic service plus texting, on top of (or underneath) the data plan. And I don't tether because somehow the bits that come from the tower and go through my phone to a laptop are special bits and are way more expensive than just regular old bits that stop at my phone.

Or I could check out Walmart's $30 T-Mobile plan with 5Gig, unlimited text and 100 voice minutes and tell AT&T to pound sand.

Actually what I would really like is the 1.8Gig of bits between the 200M $15 plan and the $25 2G plan that apparently only cost $10.

[Craig Horlacher]

I haven't looked at it recently but times where I thought I had a lot of data usage for the month and actually checked I was right around 1GB. I know that's a lot more than the average but that was a big month for me and it's much smaller than what carriers want the average Joe to think they need. If I could get a 1GB plan I would do it, especially since I've been using my wifi at home for large downloads more often recently.

[Michael Knutson]

We just went through a move (partially across country) where we had about a week's time with very little wifi, so I'll be curious to see just how much data that my wife and I actually used over that time. I've tried several utilities to monitor and track, but they never seem to sync up to AT&T's monitoring.

I personally would like to see something much more reasonable: maybe $5 per gigabyte, with a shared pool for multiple devices. We have two phone data plans, and one tablet data plan, and probably use well under 1GB per plan ... I'm not holding my breath through, as this'll probably never happen.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I've got 12 GB, spread over two SIM cards, and I don't think I've hit 5 GB ever...