AT&T axes unlimited data — pretend it's a good thing

o2coverage.jpgHark! I bring you worrying news from the colonies. It would seem AT&T is to ditch unlimited data from its mobile tarriffs.

The much maligned American mobile network is often critised for its abyssmal coverage and poor capacity. Seemingly it makes O2 look like the future, which is certainly saying something.

Under AT&T’s new tariff options 200MB of data costs $15 a month (like £11), or you can pay $25 (£18) for 2GB.

If, or more accurately, when, you exceed your 200MB limit you can buy another 200MB for $15. While if you’re on the 2GB contract and exceed that, you can buy another 1GB of data for $10.

So, if you use 9GB of data, as I do on a regular basis, you’ll be looking down the wrong end of a $85 (£65) bill for data.

While there’s no saying this is definitely going to happen in blighty, the mobile companies have been making whiny, braying noises about capacity saturation for a while, and it would fit the current socially regressive trend of “we’ll stop people doing it by making it more expensive” a la plane travel, road travel, train travel and alcohol drinking.

A more cogent plan might be to invest in better coverage and higher capacity masts — call me crazy.

[Via Gizmodo]
olijones