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The new AT&T Wireless pricing plans are out for iPhone and iPad users and they're not really going to benefit the heavy user. As a matter of fact the pricing plans are typical AT&T. Somewhat confusing.

The big issue that will cause a flap is the up-charge for tethering. They want to charge you more for it, but so far, it's only on the iPhone. No up-charge for Nokia N & E Series phone users who have smartly chosen to use JoikuSpot and I haven't read where Android based phones on AT&T are paying more.

Somehow I am suspecting this is simply a starting point and overtime, tethering costs will hit everyone. My view though is tethering is a cost you don't need. First it drives down the battery life. Second it's sharing the bandwidth to the phone. I prefer to use MiFi's and in that case, Verizon's 3G or Sprint/Clear's 4G blows away what I've seen from AT&T.

Tether me not, for now.

P.S. No more unlimited data = no more unlimited calls via Skype.

Comments

[ttrentler]

I don't get the $20 tethering charge that come without any additional data? Hopefully the iPhone will move to other carriers here in the US.
Competition would cause better pricing.

[JimCanuck]

From a Canadian perspective this is most interesting and amusing. Rogers recently ran a one or two month tethering trial and made it permanent about a month ago.

You can tether both iPhone and BlackBerry; they give instructions on their website. It simply uses up the iPhone or BlackBerry data plan at NO additional cost. And finally I may go above 1GB on my 6GB per month iPhone data plan since it's my MacBook that I take on the road.

[twitter.com/asaunders]

It's a straight cash grab, Andy. There's no justification for it in terms of excess usage. Here in Canada tethering is allowed as part of the standard data plan for iPhone, and the average usage of data on Rogers' network is about $500M. AT&T is cleverly marketing themselves as the victim in order to justify jacking up customer's data rates.