Today, AT&T made an announcement re: some rather significant restructuring of their available wireless data plans. Namely, rather than an all-in “unlimited” (AKA, 5GB limit) plan for $30/month, there are now two options: 200MB for $15/month, and 2GB for $25/month.
This particular move is potentially a sad change, for those who were previously consuming more than 2GB of data per month on their data plan. Indeed, for 3GB/month, it’s now $35/month; for 4GB, $45/month, etc.
Realistically, though, I think these changes are for the greater good. $15/month, from $30/month, means $180/year in savings, assuming it’s possible to stick under the 200MB limit. On a two year contract, that $180 instead becomes $360. It’s easy to miss that number when the phone itself is somewhere under $200, a bit more than half of that two year difference.
Changing user habits
Fundamentally, this move is less about the savings which AT&T is trying to ply to its users, and much more about shifting user behavior for their networks. I have an AT&T account in Boston, and the data network is rather slow; the voice is often unreliable and I get a variety of dropped calls. Boston, however, seems to be faring much better than San Francisco and New York, where the density of mobile data users is much higher.
Hopefully, what this will signal is a shift towards more and more people using WiFi over their 3G connections. Indeed, it was reported months ago at Ars Technica that it’s often the power-saving mechanisms of smart phone devices that are clogging the pipes. Perhaps having the 3G data disabled more often, or relying on WiFi as a primary access method can alleviate these problems. I’m sure that’s what AT&T is hoping, at least, and it’ll be interesting to see if any of that actually comes to fruition.
Small plug for Symbian
As anyone might know from my previous writings or other general ravings, I’m a big fan of Symbian. I’m quite impressed by my Nokia 5800′s support for Destinations, which allows for rather granular access rules for managing WiFi and packet data connections.
I went for months with all wireless data disabled from my phone; it took a few clicks, and then there was no way for any application to access my AT&T wireless SIM for any kind of data. Anything that needed to get online could connect via WiFi, and my wireless bill for data was $0/month. I then went back to paying for my packet data connection, and still have the option to decide which connection I want to use on a per-application basis.
It’s a highly-configurable system; and aside from the “how do I use this?” factor for certain users, I wish it were more common among platforms.
Final note re: video
I’m not sure why video via packet data connections is as popular as it is. My guess is that it’s a novel thing for users, and that the YouTube client on the iPhone has been around for years now. Until LTE or other future mobile technologies come online, I don’t particularly see the point, and there’s a certain Pandora’s Box aspect to it that I wish it hadn’t came up. In other words, what I’m saying is that large data usage isn’t all that cool, and systems such as the Twitter API which allows for data compression, or systems such as Opera Mini which reduce data throughput are pretty great technologies. In a sense, the 200MB limit is a nod towards this direction, and it’ll be interesting to see how the market transforms as a result.