AT&T to Axe Unlimited Data Plan for Smartphone Users

By Ken Brown

AT&T, who is the exclusive provider of wireless service for Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices in the United States, is planning to to axe its $30-a-month unlimited mobile data plan and introduce a new tiered plan billing system for new smartphone and iPad owners based on data consumption. Current AT&T customers with unlimited data plans can keep them, but this move is clearly aimed at all the new iPad and iPhone users.

AT&T Pricing

Here are AT&T’s estimates for how much a user will get out of the data allotments in the new plans. The amount can vary greatly, however. For example, one e-mail with five high-resolution photo attachments could use up 5% of the monthly allotment on the DataPlus plan.

  • DataPlus plan: $15 a month for 200 megabytes of data. AT&T estimates that that’s enough to send or receive 1,000 e-mails without attachments, plus send or receive 150 e-mails with attachments, view 400 Web pages, post 50 photos on social-media websites and watch 20 minutes of streaming video.
  • DataPro plan: $25 a month for 2 gigabytes of data. AT&T says that’s enough to send or receive 10,000 e-mails without attachments, plus send or receive 1,500 e-mails with attachments, view 4,000 Web pages, post 500 photos to social-media websites and watch 200 minutes of streaming video.
Los Angeles Times

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