20100603

AT&T is not evil... just a little stupid.

Lots of flack has been generated of late regarding AT&T's recent announcement to enable iPhone tethering by eliminating the unlimited data plan option for those customers that want it. What this essentially means is, in the future unlimited data plans will probably go away. Initially, it will happen for new iPhone customers after June 7, but eventually everybody will probably be in that same boat.

For those too embarrassed to ask, "tethering" refers to the process of using your iPhone as a wireless modem. This means you can associate your iPhone [ostensibly through wired or wireless connection] with another computing device [laptop, iPad, what have you] and use the iPhone's 3G cellular connection to connect to the Internet with the other computing device. Since many folks who own an iPhone also use other devices on the road, this could be a boon to people on the go.

Another note, by "jailbreaking" your iPhone [which essentially means running a program that enables you to load apps that are NOT obtained from the Apple App Store] tethering is available right now for most iPhone customers. Problem is this practice is not sanctioned by Apple and there is a real danger you could mess up your iPhone at least temporarily and lose data. Many people don't want to take that chance.

So, for most of us, we have been stuck waiting for AT&T to provide some sort of iPhone tethering options. Most people in the press and blogosphere don't like what AT&T has come up with, but I think the proposed plans, while not optimum, are not all that bad. Before you kill me, let me explain.

AT&T is primarily in business to make money. I know that might come as a shock to the media, uber-geeks [besides me], and bloggers out there who think everything should be free for everybody and all corporations are evil. And, as such, companies are always striving [or should be] to strike a delicate balance between losing their asses and gouging their customers.

At first, an unlimited data plan for iPhone users probably sounded like a good idea to AT&T. Easier to manage, simple to explain, provides a constant revenue stream, etc. Besides, when there was a small number of iPhone customers, who cared? Well, times have certainly changed. People for the most part understand smartphones, data plans, and the difference between megabytes and M&Ms. And there are TONS of iPhone users, constantly slamming AT&Ts famously fragile and barely-capable network. This situation is clearly unsustainable for AT&T cause it simply cannot scale.

According to AT&T, 98% of all iPhone users currently use less than 2GB/mo of data. IF this is true, then I think they are being quite reasonable with the new plans. Here's why:

- It currently costs an iPhone user an extra $30/mo for an unlimited data plan.

- The new "Data Pro" data plan will cost $25/mo for a max of 2GB of data per month. If 98% of all current customers won't use more than this amount, then that means, if we don't change what we do [big if] then we all save 5 bucks a month.

- IF you want tethering, you need to add another $20/mo. Note this will NOT increase your data limit, just allow you to use that data limit differently. Chances are, if you are a heavy user, you'll use more data.

So it seems AT&T has given us all the option to move to a reasonable data plan for a little less money and, for the power and data-hungry users to get what's coming to them - a BILL. I'm sorry, but bandwidth is not free, and I for one don't feel like subsidizing all the hackers out there hosting websites from their iPads. I'm fine with this new setup. But I'm not abusing the current situation nor do I wish to.

What would have made the deal better? AT&T should have included tethering FREE with all limited data plans. That way, everybody could experiment with tethering. The way I look at it, bits are bits, and it should not matter to AT&T what you use those bits for, voice, phone data, or other device data. You would still be limited to the same number of bits in each plan, so all adding tethering would do is give you more ways to use those bits. If successful, all customers would quickly run over their data limits, giving AT&T the opportunity to make even more money charging exorbitant overage fees. With this approach, we all win.

But no, they had to take the stance that to even TRY tethering you must commit to pay an extra $20/mo for TWO YEARS, and still get NO MORE data allocation in your plan. That's ridiculous, and should not have been done.

So for that, AT&T, you get a solid C-...when you could have easily gotten the A.