more on Cell Carriers to Web Customers: Use Us, but Not Too Much

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

I use  t-mobile and if you have a Express capable phone you get about  
80-100 kb for 19.95/m djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rob Carlson <rob () vees net>
Date: May 11, 2006 12:01:38 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] Cell Carriers to Web Customers: Use Us, but Not Too  
Much

On Thu, 11 May 2006, David Farber wrote:

> "The pricing scheme is established," Mr. Beebe said. "It's flat- 
> rate unlimited. That's what consumers are used to, and that's how  
> it's going to be."

This is exactly why I left AT&T Wireless to go to T-Mobile a few  
years ago.  At the time, AT&T Wireless' GPRS packages were offered in  
megabytes.  I believe at the time I had a a 4MB package for $7/mo,  
with some pretty obnoxious overage fees metered by the kilobyte.

At the exact same time, T-Mobile was offering unlimited for $20/mo.  
When I cancelled my old service, a retention rep at AT&T even made an  
effort to offer me an unlimited plan but the best they could come up  
with was $70/mo for unlimited on top of my $50/mo voice minutes.

Even on months where I use a few hundred KB of data access, I'm still  
happy to pay the $20/mo flat fee because I know the next month I  
might spend a week on the road and rack up several hundred megabytes  
in the car and in various coffee houses and client sites.

I may be capped at 56k throughput by the nature of the GPRS network  
but I know I can do whatever I want to within the boundary of that  
bandwidth cap, and I know my bill that month will be within a few  
dollars of what it was the month before.

I do believe that since then, AT&T Wireless begat Cingular begat AT&T  
Wireless have assumed more logical pricing plans, but since I'm  
already a happy customer of a competitor why would I look back?

--
Rob Carlson  rob () vees net  http://vees.net/


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