iPHONE HOGS TO GET THEIR JUST DESSERTS; THE REST MAY SAVE
The decision, industry analysts told the N.Y. Times, could signal a shift away from an era in which American wireless carriers sought to attract customers with simple, all-you-can-eat pricing plans for data—which includes email, video, apps, Facebook and other websites and streaming audio services like Pandora and YouTube. In fact, Pandora, YouTube and similar services will quickly burn through the newer plans in a matter of hours, making it difficult to justify the heavier usage.
The trouble for AT&T was that fewer than 2% of users made such heavy use of the network that they slowed it down for everyone else. So, now, instead of paying $30 for unlimited data, newer customers can choose a $15 monthly option for 200 megabytes or $25 for 2 gigs. AT&T estimates that the more expensive plan will cover 1,000 minutes of video, 400 song downloads (not that anyone would be crazy enough to do such a thing) or a million one-page emails. Anything more will cost more, potentially a lot more, Digital Music News speculates.
But when Pogue did the math on his own data usage, he got a pleasant surprise. “Like hundreds of people reporting similar surprises on Twitter, I discovered that my wife and I almost never use more than about 150 megabytes a month,” he wrote in his latest column. “Here I am, a power-using geek, and I could put both phones on the DataPlus plan and save $360 a year!... Maybe I'm just dazzled by the $360 a year AT&T just saved me. But as I see it, AT&T has just pulled off a very delicate balancing act indeed: it came up with a new pricing scheme that benefits almost everyone, customers and AT&T alike.”
Last year, wireless carriers collectively took in $41.5 billion in revenue from data use, compared with $8.5 billion in 2005, according to CTIA, the industry’s trade association.
iPhone users use on average a third more data than the typical smartphone owner. The biggest data pigs in the world are the iPhone guys,” analyst Edward Snyder told the N.Y. Times, AT&T said the changes would mean lower prices even for people who might think they could easily burn through 2 gigabytes.
“It’s a stupefying amount of data,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel told the Times. He said 65% of the company’s smartphone customers tend to use less than 200 megabytes a month, and 98% averaged less than 2 gigabytes.
Customers will be able to monitor their data use on AT&T’s site—and yes, there’s an app for that as well—and the company will send alerts when they near their quota. Going over that quota will mean an additional charge — $10 for an extra gigabyte for those on the more expensive plan.
T-Mobile took another approach, saying in April that customers on its 5-gigabyte data plan would have their access speed slowed when they went over their allotment, instead of paying more. Verizon Wireless, which declined to comment on its future pricing plans to the Times, offers an unlimited plan for $30 a month.
Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner, told the paper he expected Verizon to try to capitalize on AT&T’s move, at least at first. “I suspect we’ll see Verizon putting out Southwest Airlines-style ads saying, ‘Our bags still fly free,’ ” he said. But he agreed with other analysts that Verizon would eventually join not just AT&T but most other carriers around the world, which for years have charged on the basis of use.
