This week AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spoke up with the New York Times on his biggest regret, that being AT&T's first introduction of unlimited mobile data for smartphone customers. This will probably not come as a huge surprise for customers who had less than an entertaining time about two years ago when unlimited data died for the first time on the network with tiered data bumping up costs each year since. But for AT&T, and every other mobile carrier for that matter, it only makes basic business sense (and dollars) that you'd make a customer pay for a product based on how much of it they take.
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‘data plan’ Stories
AT&T ‘regrets’ Unlimited Data
Apple mobile data service tipped for 2012
This week we're hearing word that Apple may well be setting up shop inside the year 2012 for their own wireless service across the USA for the likes of the iPhone and iPad. This is not the first we've heard that Apple will be offering mobile data services themselves, the company long not in a position to consider such a possibility for their undeniably popular mobile devices, but as wireless industry strategist Whitey Bluestein notes this week, they're coming up on a crossroads. Will you be paying Apple for every component of your iPhone in the very near future?
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Verizon intros new prepaid plans, Jetpack hotspot
Verizon has announced new prepaid plans that will let users avoid being bound to a two-year contract. The new prepaid plans will kick off tomorrow, May 1, starting with an offer that includes unlimited talk and text along with 1GB of data for $80 per month. It will initially be available only for one device, the Samsung Illusion, but other devices will likely follow.
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EU Parliament sounds siren call for mobile data cost
Members of both the Danish Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament have agreed this week to create lowered price caps on mobile data roaming charges. This will have an adverse affect on how willing business users will be to using their mobile phones when traveling from state to state and country to country, and may very well tip international governments to look into similar price-fixing for mobile carriers in their jurisdictions as well. New rules will be put into effect for the whole of the European Union once Parliament as a whole approves the deal, this expected soon with implementation set for July 1st.
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Verizon’s shared data plans imminent, reveals leak
Verizon has long hinted at and recently confirmed that it will begin offering shared data plans sometime this year. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo had said that the transition would take time, calling it a long-term migration, but he insisted that the new billing method should start rolling out by mid-year. And according to a leaked screenshot obtained by PhoneArena, it looks like the carrier is moving forward swiftly with its plans.
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I’m dumping my mobile data for NetZero free wireless ASAP
This week NetZero is re-spinning the deal that made them famous: free internet, with a few catches – and not nearly enough catches to turn me away from dropping my mobile data bill altogether. When I head out of the house and pick up my smartphone, I check my email, reply to text messages, maybe make a call, and thats it. I find the cost of wireless data appalling, monthly bills reaching nearly $100 across an average family of four’s multiple smart devices – so why not drop it all entirely for NetZero’s new free wireless plan?
AT&T offers quiet settlement for iPhone data throttling lawsuit
AT&T is offering a quiet settlement to iPhone user, Matthew Spaccarelli, who sued and won against the carrier in small claims court last month over the throttling of his unlimited data plan. Declining the offer, Spaccarelli has forwarded the letter from AT&T's lawyers to the Associated Press, revealing that the carrier threatened to cut his service plan if he refused to talk with the company.
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AT&T increases unlimited data throttling threshold
AT&T revealed today that it has made some adjustments to its data throttling policy for customers still subscribed to legacy unlimited data plans. Customers on these unlimited data plans will now have a higher data cap before throttling kicks in. For those on HSPA+ plans the cap will be 3GB per month, while the cap for LTE customers will be 5GB.
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Verizon CFO says family data plans coming mid-year
During an investors conference today, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo revealed that the carrier plans to launch shared family data plans by mid-year. There had been plenty of speculation about the new data offering, which Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed would start sometime in 2012. But the time frame has always remained vague and even with Shammo's affirmation, he qualifies it still as a "long-term migration" that won't happen instantly on launch.
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AT&T planning to charge app developers data fees
AT&T has revealed plans to launch a new service that would give mobile app developers the option of paying for the mobile data used by their app subscribers. Although this sounds ludicrous, AT&T's network and technology head John Donovan likened it to offering a 1-800 Toll-Free option for apps, where developers could motivate users to download and use their apps if the data involved in using the apps didn't count towards the users' data plan limits.
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AT&T explains 2GB throttling of unlimited data plans
AT&T had to explain its data throttling practices after news broke that some of its unlimited data customers were being slapped with slow data speeds after using only 2GB of data. The unlimited data plans were discontinued back in 2010, replaced by tiered plans, but some customers have been grandfathered in. AT&T then announced a new throttling policy that began last October, but said the change would only affect the top five percent of its heaviest data users.
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Wikipedia to be first Data Free mobile website on Earth
When the term Data Free comes up on your news readers and in the newspapers in the coming months, you’ll know that it started here, and with Wikipedia and Orange, who together will be offering free – that is, without data charges – use of Wikipedia’s vast knowledge archive. What this means for the future of the mobile industry is this: the door has been opened to free data, or at least that’s what Wikipedia is aiming at through mobile users in Africa and the Middle East soon. Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation have announced in a press release today that they are aiming to make their store of information available for free to those who need it, those who otherwise would have no such simple access to the information you and I take for granted.
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