AT&T To Lower Unlimited Data & SMS Pricing

I pay $30 for my iPhone data plan and an additional $5 for 200 test messages a month. Glad to see Blackberry and iPhone users are getting porked on this deal.

What I'd like to see is an iPhone SMS plan that's somewhere between 200 and 1500 messages. I use a bit more than 200, but I certainly don't go anywhere near 1,500.

500 would not be a bad number.

How about 361.25, that's about my average?

You can have some of my minutes.

I thought we were talking about texts.

Can I go home yet?

How about them not being selfish dicks and include texts when you have a data plan?

I was thinking minutes.
Agreed, let's get the hell out of here.

I'm in the same boat as you. We pay $30 for an unlimited text plan for families though, which is about $10 per phone. Not a bad deal really. The $30 data plan per iPhone is what kills us. If we could get this deal it would reduce our data plan expense by half.

It is absolutely true that iPhone users use more data however. Surprisingly, I have found I'm using 5-7x the amount of data per month that I did on my WinMo phone, yet I only regularly use the Facebook app ... in addition to our Exchange Push Email. (which I also used on my WinMo phone) It's still minuscule though; I used less than 100MB last month.

Now if only they had a phone plan less than 450 minutes a month! I have so many roll over minutes! How about a plan with less minutes for those who do not need to talk that much but still need a bb?

I wish I could share my rollover minutes. My wife and I have about 8100 that are unused becuase we are usually over 700 but way less than 1400.

Are you not on a family share plan? If you are, you do share them.

If not, you should be able to merge your lines and keep your rollover minutes ... although you'd only keep one lines worth. I heard someone ask an AT&T rep this exact question in an AT&T store one day.

Sorry, we are on a family plan. It's just that we would fall in the 800-900 minute spot most of the time.

Can you drop down from the 1400 to the 700 plan and burn off those 8100 roll-over minutes? I feel that the rate plans should auto-adjust and cap overage charges.

IOW: Once, as in your case, your roll-overs exceed 2-3 times the extra minutes with the higher plan (1400-2100 minutes with 700vs1400 allowances) your bill should be reduced on a month-by-month basis to the rate for a lower usage plan and your overages on that allowance should then use your accumulated roll-overs until your monthly usage exceeds the lower plan limit plus the remaining roll-over minutes (at which time you are restored to the original higher plan).

In the case where you exceed your monthly limit (plus usage of roll-over minutes), your overage minutes charges should be capped when they are more than the difference between your current plan and the higher plan. This would mean that you pay that month for the higher plan and pay overage for THAT plan's limit or get roll-over minutes (possibly on a reduced basis) for the under usage under the higher plan.

Billing is done by computers not by clerks using Pen and Paper so this computation of the correct price is not that hard to automate. So long as the company provides roll-over minutes (as opposed to going "Tough Luck. You did not use all the minutes you paid for") it should go all the way to allow you to use them by automatically dropping you to a lower cost plan to allow use of them (or drop your monthly bill to their pay-as-you-go/no-paid-for-minutes plan so ALL your usage for the month is roll-over usage).

If you drop to a lower minute plan, you lose any rollover minutes above the amount of minutes allocated on your new plan. In other words, he'd lose 7400 rollover minutes and wind up with 700 if he downgraded to the 700 minute plan.

This is IMO a scam and against the intent of the issuing Roll-Over Minutes. If I have, for example, a 1400 minute plan, I pay to use 1400 minutes. If in a month, I do not use all these paid for minutes, I can use them later (so long as I am still a customer) in lieu of paying for overage minutes when I exceed my 1400 minute allocation for a month. IMO, just because I drop down to a lower limit plan, I should still be allowed to use them since, as I noted, I had already bought and paid for them. So long as Roll-Over minutes are being granted (as opposed to most other companies of treating the monthly allocation as "Use Them or Lose Them" monthly minutes) the switch to a lower allocation plan should not affect my ability to use them to over overages. Denying the ability to use the Roll-Over minutes just because you switch to a lower plan is a case of "Bait and Switch" since you are promised the use of these minutes and are not then being allowed to use them.

I somewhat agree. But the reason I asked, is because it was my intention to pay for a 1400 minute plan, build up a bunch of rollover minutes, then switch back to a 700 minute plan, just to ensure I didn't get popped with overages until I got a base of rollover built up. The rep said that was definitely one of the reasons the policy was in place.

In all honesty, I find it hard to complain about the policy since rollover minutes expire every 12th month anyway and no other provider offers them.

If you downgrade you loose all the rollover minutes that you have saved up to equal the plan that you choose.... I worked for AT&T... trust me on that... although its not a bad deal considering at&t is the only company to offer such!

they have data only bb plans. no voice contract required.

And I still smile every month paying $30 for 500 min, unlimited night-weekends at 7p, unlimited broadband, unlimited text & mms, and unlimited voice/broadband roaming.

You must be on Sprint.

Knock them all you want, but I pay $80 less per month for 3 lines that have 3000 shared minutes, Free N&W after 7pm, and unlimited data, multimedia, text, internet and whatever else that with AT&T. (Unlimited to 5GB that is).

I have better coverage, less drops / incomplete calls and I am not giving to the illegal wire tappers.

Your mileage may vary.

Sprint coverage is better in some places. However many places it sucks as bad as AT&T. Check out consumer reports. As for the 5GB you need to read things more carefully. Sprint also has the cap but those are tied to USB cards. Verizon has Unlimited on Phones unless tethered just like everyone else. People continue to state phones have a 5GB when they don't.

When they say iPhone and BlackBerry - do they mean PDA phones in general or just iPhone and BlackBerry? Wouldn't make sense if it was just those two phones excluded and not PDA data-intensive phones across the board.

Yes, that plan applies to any PDA handset on ATT's network.

If you have an Iphone you need an Iphone plan.
If you have a blackberry you need a blackberry plan.

If you have a hacked Iphone, blackberry, or just a regular PDA phone with something like symbian or windows mobile you can just use the any phone unlimited data and text plan.

Yep. For iPhone that would mean you would lose visual voicemail on the iPhone. However, you can install SwirlyMMS and get real MMSes.

This pricing is better, but even with these lowered prices unlimited text is still a ripoff. I use AIM and send IMs to people's phone numbers to stay under 200.

SwirlyMMS is not "real" MMS, I wish it was. It just uses the @vzwpix.com or whatever address of the recepient, or just sends them an email with a link. To my knowledge it doesn't do jack for receiving MMS messages.

Yeah I was wondering the same thing, and the articles online are not too clear.

Right now I have a Motorola Q9h, so does this mean I get to take part in this new deal, or am I still forced with the PDA Personal plan for the ridiculous price of 35 dollars WITHOUT text messaging.

Drop your plan to $15 MEdia Net.

PDA Personal = MEdia Net for double the price.

drop your unlimited calling to $30 a month... with taxes & fees it will add up to Sprint's prepaid $50/month service.

Maybe I'm not seeing it correctly, but isn't AT&T beating Verizon's price with this plan? According to the VZW website the $30 appears to include only data and email, not sms messaging. Looks like unlimited sms is an additional $20 on top of that. It should be noted I'm looking at VZW's PDA and Blackberry plans. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I have the iPhone 3G and I'm paying $100 a month right now. 450 anytime minutes, unlimited (5GB) data and unlimited text. This is so poor on AT&T's part for not lowering the cost of the plan for the people who currently pay the most anyway!

It's such a joke that they charge that much for text messages when it costs nearly nothing as a service.

As for the comment about a plan with less then 450 minutes, I totally agree with that as well. I get 450 minutes a month of which I may use around 100 tops meaning I got thousands of roll over minutes! They should let us credit these minutes back to our accounts and get a couple bucks off our bill or offer plans with less minutes.

Of course all this isn't enough to make me not use it or pay for it. I will say that AT&T's network has been pretty good to me so far. And that's pretty surprising considering I switched to AT&T from Verizon when the iPhone 3G came out.

unlimited text should be $5 with $0.01 per text with out a plan incoming free.

Agreed. That would be a fair price.

Not sure why AT&T would hose the BlackBerry users. BlackBerry technology compresses data, therefore BlackBerry use less data in most cases. Somebody is uninformed

What some enterprising wireless carrier ought to do is come out with a plan that has a stated formulaic approach to the price/data mix.

(the following examples use hypothetical numbers)

Say there's a $40/month plan - this $40 plan can be a mix of voice and data in any ratio the user wants because each minute of voice time is equal to some number of Mb of data and each minute of voice time is valued at say $0.015. Usage over the $40/month will be valued at say $0.02 per voice minute equivalent.

They could also have an $60 plan where the voice minute equivalent is say $0.01, and overage is $0.015 per voice minute equivalent. Indeed, a variety of price points lower/higher than these could be offered.

The value of voice vs. data is calculable via a formula and that would make it easier for each user to determine how they can allocate their monthly expenditure.

Price plans mentioned above are Copyright (c) 2009, Maynard G. Krebs. All Rights Reserved. Telco's may contact my attorneys for licensing terms and conditions.

Have ya seen Dobie and Gilda lately?

Does anyone know if the are going to offer a similar plan for families? And if so how much?

For $400 so i wouldnt have to pay $30 just for god damn data. So i plopped in my old sim card and everything worked great. Then after two days i get a txt saying "Your Data Plan is not eligible for iPhone 3G. To prevent excess charges and enable visual voice mail, please call 611 and add a data plan for iphone. Why do i have to pay the damn subsidized price for a phone i bought without there help? Christ i wish i could switch to sprint and get there damn Everything plan, it cost the same plus i get mobile TV!

This is the exact opposite of T-Mobile. They recently raised our data charge from $20 to $25. I'm in at $20, but still thinking of cancelling.

$25 is for the 'Unlimited Web + 400 Messages' plan, which is just the $5 'Any 400 Domestic Messages' plan bundled with the old $20 'Total Internet' data plan (what you have, which does not include any texts).

(You can also opt out of the bundled text messages under the new plan, but you don't get a discount for doing that and have to pay for every msg sent or received.)

Good to see this, all data plans with AT&T and all cellular providers is over priced anyway.

If this does not effect those with existing contracts, it's a promotional deal. Since in a year they can jump it back up thus blocking the deal from existing customers.

This $30 is for a family plan, Right ? I am only paying $20 /mo unlimited text and mms. Want to make sure they're not going to bump me up.

ummm, if/when they change the data plan for regular phones from $15 to $10 then i'd think about it. i have no use whatsoever for this but if the pricepoint becomes a mere $10, then i'm in. otherwise, i see myself getting an ipod touch & thumbing my nose at any type of data plan...bub

I wanna pay for the air I breathe
I wanna pay for the peaks and valleys in the AC power I receive in addition to the power itself
I wanna pay for the pollutants in the water I drink
I wanna pay for Washington to bailout every failure in the business realm

But...
Most of all....

I wanna pay extra to utilize the unused portion of packets that already have to be sent to my phone in order to maintain its connection to the cellular network. I mean after all why shouldn't they profit from the data that's already being paid for and sent to my phone twice!?