Dear AT&T CEO: Data-only Plans are Already Here. You Offer Them.
From AT&T: Data-only plans coming for phones in 2 years:
The CEO of AT&T Inc. said Friday that cellphone plans that count only data usage are likely to come in the next two years. In such a scenario, phone calls and texts would be considered as just another form of data.
AT&T already offers this–on the iPad. So does Verizon. Even though it isn’t marketed that way, T-Mobile offers an “unlimited” prepaid monthly plan that could be easily used that way. It includes a perfunctory 100 minutes of voice calling, but it is includes unlimited text and data (unthrottled up to first 5GfB) for $30/mo.
Clearly Randall Stephenson doesn’t know his own company’s offerings, let alone the offerings of his competition. My question is: why doesn’t AT&T offer a similar plan for other devices? Why doesn’t Verizon?
Oh yeah, they want to maximize the amount of money they are able to get customers to pay. Offering a data-only service would seem to go against that.
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Comment by Larry C
FWIW, AT&T (and other carriers) also offer data & text only plans to the deaf & hard of hearing.
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/articles-resources/disability-resources/text-accessibility-plan-for-iphone.jsp
https://www.sprint.com/landings/accessibility/hearing.html
Comment by PhoneBoy
AT&T just trades a $40 voice plan for a $20 texting plan. Better, but still not data only.
Comment by tom
what i would really like to see myself is metered paygo data at reasonable price. basically i want data sold the same way voice used to be sold on prepaid
instead preapid is moving toward ‘unlimited’ everything but with hidden ‘limits’ on data that get you throttled or your account closed if you use too much.
i would love a plan where i can place a balance on the account that than gets debited at something like 0.05/minute 0.02/text and 0.01 MB
that would be similar to the bundled rates now but i would only pay for what i use on a slow month and have affordable additional charges on a month that i need a lot more than usual.
the carriers are also very unfriendly to people who want to be heavier users and are willing to pay. with voice the price per minute always went down with bigger bundles the same tends not to be true with data.
a lot of prepaid MVNO’s are offering plan that give unlimited talk and text for $40/month. i can add 2GB of data for $10 more, but thats it. why not 4GB for $20 and 6GB for $30.
there are a lot of people out there looking for big buckets of mobile broadband(especially mifi and usb dongle users) that simple are not available in the US.
i know quite a few people who would like to use mobile broadband and ditch their DSL/cable all together. they are perfectly happy with the speed/quality up until they get throttled, cut off or have to pay overages. they need plans in the 20 – 30 GB range and/or metered data at an affordable per MB price.
honestly i do not even see the point of 4G with the small caps that are offered.
Comment by PhoneBoy
Ting is about the only thing that even approaches this. They still use buckets, but at least the buckets are dynamic in the sense you only get charged for the buckets your usage falls in (i.e. the overage isn’t scary). Of course, I would prefer to a true pay-go with reasonable rates, as you suggest, though I think the data charge you propose is still too high
Comment by tom
of course they are too high. i just multiplied the existing rates.