Got an AT&T iPhone or thinking of getting one? Get ready to get bent as they are doing away with unlimited internet!
Do you have an iPhone or is your cellular phone service through AT&T? Get ready to bend over again as AT&T has just announced that they’re doing away with unlimited Internet plans. What that means is neither did have to different plans wanted 200 megs and one at 2 GB of bandwidth allotted. And if you use over these obviously you will be paying an extra 10 or so dollars a month on top of what these plans will be (sources have quoted the plans at $10 and $25 per month but AT&T has yet to state the actual facts and associated costs on these plans).
So the days of not having to think about how much bandwidth you’re using when you’re downloading that video clip or that movie promotion are now gone. According to AT&T because 10% or less of their users use up to 90% of their bandwidth. So this is a way of making those that use the extra amount of bandwidth pay for it. And of course at the same time of greatly increasing AT&T’s profits.
You have to remember AT&T is definitely a for-profit company and they’ve had a terrible reputation with their shareholders for not making stellar profits like they should have been for years. So AT&T is just messing with people’s pay plans to make them pay more for the same service. That may not be fair, but if you buy an iPhone you are basically locked into using AT&T and their data plans.
Maybe what people need to do is unlock their phone and go with another provider or buy an unlocked phone that they can use on a different cellular network. And as some low-cost plans like Cricket have gone nationwide and have unlimited data plans that cost about half of the AT&T plans this may make those much more popular. Currently the problem with a company like cricket is that they don’t use sim card capable phones.
Right now, companies like Cricket and Boost Mobile are not big competitors to AT&T, but as AT&T keeps increasing the costs of having a smart phone account with all the bells and whistles, companies like these will become increasingly more important. Now all it takes is for Cricket to come out with a low-cost and highly competitive smart phone similar to the iPhone with sim card capabilities and you have a true competitor that could actually knock AT&T out of the lucrative cell phone market.
As customers cell phone plans keep creeping up over $100 and into the $120 to $150 mark and higher consumers will start looking at fledgling companies like Cricket and others with much more interest. When the average smart phone plan starts at $99 per month with AT&T and its competitors and you have the same plan with cricket for $50 per month you will start to see an exodus as people start switching to the lower-priced plans. Word is that Cricket is going to be using the Droid (with Google) with sim card capability in the next year or two. That would be devastating to AT&T and the iPhone.
