AT&T Introducing Verizon-Style Shared Data Plans 307
zacharye writes with news of some exciting rate changes for folks on ATTWS. From the article: "AT&T on Wednesday announced the upcoming availability of new shared data plans. Following Verizon's lead, AT&T's new plans will allow subscribers to share data between family members and also between devices. Dubbed 'AT&T Mobile Share' plans, the new offerings start at $40 per month plus $45 per device for unlimited voice minutes and messaging and 1GB of data, and top out at $200 plus $30 per device for unlimited voice and texts plus 200GB of data..."
My favorite part is where you pay per-device and get nothing in return.
Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
None of need 2GB of data a month - we could easily share that. But, the new plan actually costs significantly more.
Because you were naive enough to think these plans were to save you money rather than make the telecoms more money?
AT&T bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Saves nothing, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
You think there will be less than $15 in taxes and "fees"?
I bet that $265 becomes $300 after all is said and done.
this is like costco 10 years ago (Score:4, Insightful)
i remember the inflation of the early part of the last decade. i used to shop at costco and all the food and other things you bought on a regular basis would go up in price every month.
but things like a 5 year supply of toilet cleaner or a 10 year supply of plastic wrap stayed the same. i still have a 3000 foot roll of plastic wrap i bought at costco like 7 years ago.
its crazy, some stuff at costco will outlast marriages
same here, the cheap stuff like minutes and text AT&T is giving A LOT of for less. the value which is the data they are charging an arm and a leg for. and if i have 4GB why am i still going to pay $20 for a tablet on my plan even if i don't use any data on it?
Apple and Samsung are at fault too. $700 for a new phone? they are living on fat margins which are about to come crashing down as people go prepaid and keep their phones as long as a laptop
Re:AT&T bugs me (Score:4, Insightful)
Carriers incur no cost for messages, because they are part of the phone's sync to the tower,
I thought the same way until a previous Slashdot comment explained how this works in detail. While the text messages use the same packet format as the phone's sync to the tower, it still causes additional packets, and bigger packets. So the bandwidth is not free. It would be like sending an email by embedding it inside DNS requests. Yes, you need to make DNS requests anyway, but sending an email through them would not make the bandwidth free.
Ultimately, this does not change your point though, it is just a nitpick. Their policies are ridiculous. Charging for Face Time over cell networks is an awesome example of why we need network neutrality. (Sorry Ron Paul - I like you but you are wrong on this one!) If I were Verizon, I would have my marketing department jump all over this one. I can use my bandwidth for whatever I want on my Verizon + Android combo.
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the idea.
Internally, AT&T executives refer to it as the "Blood from a Stone Plan".
The country's largest ISPs believe that you have too much money and that they deserve what you have worked for. It's what I called "Privatized Class Warfare" and is another of the hallmarks of late-stage capitalism. This phenomenon can be identified when a company decides they are going to charge you significantly more while giving you much less. Another identifying characteristic is that the two or three companies in the respective sector all do it at approximately the same time so they don't have to worry about that inconvenient "competition" that is so destructive to terminal-stage capitalism.
Countdown to AT&T and Verizon merger starts....now.
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they know what we want. They just don't care. They figure if you can afford a smartphone, you can afford damn near whatever they want to charge you.
$40 a month plus $45 a device for 1gb? That's a deal so bad it needs to come with a complimentary tube of KY jelly, yet people are going to pay it, because there are no alternatives (or the alternatives suck).
1gb. seriously 1gb? What is this, 1995? I go through about 200mb a day of wireless data usage, and that's being careful where I visit, using noscript and adblock to keep data usage to a minimum, and generally restraining myself. if I wasn't paying attention, I could do 1gb in less than a half an hour at 4g speeds.
obligatory slashdot analogy:
telco - "Ok, here is your 200mph 4G car. it's going to cost you a damn pretty penny, but you've got it!"
me - "sweet!"
* vroomm 50mph, vrooooommmm 100mph, vrooooooomm 200mph! screeeeeeeeeaaaachhhhalt.*
me - "what the hell? It only worked for 30 minutes, now it doesn't work anymore"
telco - "oh, didn't we tell you? you can only drive at 200mph for 30 minutes a month unless you want to pay us again. pretty much the same ammount. for another 30 minutes."
me - "why would you advertise that your network is that fast if I'm not allowed to go that fast for anything more than a few minutes?"
telco - "you're new here, aren't you? just turn around and bend over."
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure I do. It means you make money by having money, and that having money is worth more than working.
This is why investors pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than workers. The idea being a pile of money is worth more than the labor of the people who are actually making stuff.
When you actually look at if for a while, you start to see how it's not sustainable and how it will inevitably end with a very few really rich guys and everybody else with very little money or power.
As Merriam Webster puts it,
The main problem being that there is no such thing as a free market. Remember, the people who came up with the idea of capitalism also believed in perpetual motion machines and transmuting lead into gold via purification.
Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
This just in:
existing cell phone plans don't get cheaper with time - they go up with additional fees and cramming.
Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, we are all familiar with the model - much like AT&T's previous bait and switch with the data plans.
1. We offer unlimited data!
2. We are introducing limited data plans as an option, unlimited still available!
3. We're phasing out unlimited plans, but users who have an unlimited plan can keep the plan!
4. Users with unlimited plans have to choose a limited plan, but don't worry, very few people exceed it and incurr the pornographic overage fees
5. (over time, content changes requiring users to use more data to get the same content, and fees ratched up 'naturally'
So based on that, the future is....?
1. We offer shared data plans! (if you pay obscene fees that render this a non-money-saver)
2. We're phasing out any other form of data plan.
3. We're doing things to your wallet that you can usually only see in a barnyard, due to your inability to control data usage simultaneously for 5 people.
Re:Oy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's amazing! I read the definition YOU provided in your comment and came to a completely different conclusion about capitalism. It's almost like you decided to read whatever you wanted... actual words be damned.
Sure I do. It means you make money by having money, and that having money is worth more than working.
I wonder where those with the money to invest got it? I wonder if they worked for it to start with? No... it must have been given to them by some evil invisible force that's out to get the little man. But wait, some of those with money were the little man at one point... how can this be?
And just what do you think will happen if these people with money (your nemesis) guess wrong about how they should invest their money? What if they put their money to work paying someone (someone like you for example) to do something that the market doesn't want? Their money goes away. It doesn't disappear though... it just goes away from the person who put it to a crappy use and goes to someone who will put it to work doing more sustainable (profitable) things.
I'm on a bit of rant. But it's a rant of grief, not so much anger. The country in which I grew up, the USA (I don't know where you're from), is not what you seem to claim it to be, and it disheartens me to hear comments such as your own - where the big bad world is geared towards crushing those without money. Where those who labor believe that those who pay them are evil. Where those who labor choose to spend their free time watching american idol instead of doing something productive for the economy like starting their own business, reading a book, writing a book, or inventing something useful. A little "bubble gum" time is fine However, if your biggest attempt at contributing to society is getting up and going to work and being pissed at everyone else whose chosen to take risks with their time / money (in order to start a business a pay you to work) then your attempt is lame, and you, sir, are the reason for your own problems.
Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure I do. It means you make money by having money, and that having money is worth more than working. This is why investors pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than workers. The idea being a pile of money is worth more than the labor of the people who are actually making stuff.
You just made my day, knowing that there's someone else out there who "gets it." It is a source of endless frustration to me, the notion that a lot people out there have, that making money off of having money should be taxed at a lower rate than actually working. It drives me friggin' nuts when this is pitched as "class warfare" or "wealth envy." It is not wealth envy to expect people to pay at least the same tax rate--possibly even more--on money made off of having money versus actually working for it.
Yes, I do believe that there's class warfare going on, but it's not the lower- or middle class that's instigating it; it's the wealthy who are constantly looking for new ways to get out of paying taxes, getting "bailouts", getting subsidies, all the while complaining about the audacity of a poor person wanting health care.
I know I'll probably be modded down as Flamebait, and truth be known, I probably should be because I know it's a touchy topic. Still, I wanted you to know that you are very, very right and I wish there were more people out there who recognized how insane, unethical, and unsustainable the capital gains tax rate is. (Meanwhile, some people are actually pushing for it to be zero, go figure.)
Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
I like your optimism that the American dream is still alive but you're also delusional if you don't think the lower income people are under full assault right now. Rather than set taxes to pre-Bush era the fight is simply to cut programs that were created and solvent prior to the Bush tax cuts which Obama extended. Given the amont of rhetoric coming from the Republican party which has a significant amount of influence over what is going on these days, I find it hard to just scoff at the idea that lower income people aren't being taken advantage of. When tax disparity is as high as it is these days it's really hard to draw another conclusion.
Also, as someone who started his own business more than a decade ago and I pretty easily state that it is significantly harder to start up and become successful these days. Unless you start with money it is becoming an NBA allstar odds type of game. Sure, it still happens but it's few and far between, like people that drop out of college and become billionaires.
Most of the time big money comes from other big money. Look at yesterdays story about the people behind Dragon Dictate. They got swollowed up by large coprorations that simply raped them. They aren't alone in this practice.
The post-WW2 era was about major prosperity and growth. Since the late 90s it has been about globalizing infrastructure and socializing losses. When you or I make a bad investment we lose our investment, when Sheldon Ayers does, he changes the laws and fixes the reason he didn't make money and then not only loses nothing but gains billions.
Wake up! Rich people aren't evil, they are just given too much power and do what anybody with too much power does.
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pure collusion, that proves that ATT and Verizon have no intent on competing. If this continues, market regulation or breakup may be required.
Raising the cost of data from $30 for 3GB to $40 for 1GB is a 300% price increase and unacceptable in any mature market. As unlimited text and calling plans become redundant to cheaper internet based services, the mobile companies are trying to lock in current income for specialized services people will no longer need.
AT&T and Verizon have developed these plans to protect themselves from the inevitable switch from charging as much as the market will bear for voice, text or data to all services becoming part of the data stream with the next evolution of LTE. These plans are an attempt to challenge the prospect that they may become "dumb pipe" providers of data in place of more expensive add on services.
Once voice calls are just data streams on the data network, the mobile providers will give you that data for free when using their services, as opposed to charging you for the data if you use skype or another ip phone system. They will still charge you outrageous foreign call rates and international roaming charges when ever possible. This would be a definite violation of network neutrality as they would be providing preferencial treatment to their own, non optional unlimited voice and text plans over competing internet services.
The new share everything plans acknowledge the diminishing importance of voice and text services, by requiring you to buy unlimited service and shifting the current fees for these services to the first GB of data.
Even though you some people may actually pay less under these new plans, they are designed solely to protect loss of income that will result when people no longer need high voice minute plans because the competing data based voice plans will be identical in delivery and quality to the mobile provides plans yet without added rates.
This is a strategy to increase data fees while delivery costs drop to further increase profits while fooling the public into thinking they might be getting a deal.
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
At least the ATT plan looks cheaper than Verizon though, because if you're single you pay $40 a month. Verizon makes single persons pay the full $90 as if you were a full family. :-o
Uh, a single person on ATT's shared plan pays $95 for their phone and 1gb of data. Verizon charges $90 on their Share Everything plan for the same service level.
Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
Now now...I take the money I made last year via capital gains (the money I worked for before I retired in 2007 is already spent, let's say). I have NOT "already paid taxes on it when it was earned" except for the 15% capital gains tax (which can easily be reduced). I invest it in derivative instruments - options, like that. None of that money ever gets invested in a corporation or in any way goes to "creating jobs". Derivatives account for several times the amount of money in the actual equities market and it's just a betting pool.
I do nothing but listen to a radio show in the morning and make a few trades. I don't use money "that has already been taxed" and I don't pay corporate taxes. I'm paying half the tax rate as the guy who picks up my garbage, except I can use IRAs and other tax exempt instruments to avoid it. Now, I have a limit to how much I can put into my IRA (yet, somehow Mitt Romney has an IRA worth over $100,000,000.00).
Don't tell me that there's is anything like a good reason why the money I make in those 20 minutes I spend at 6am listening to a radio show and making a few trades online deserves to be treated better tax-wise than the money made by a guy who is out in 105 F weather picking up garbage cans all day.
The worst thing about the current metastasized capitalism we have now is what it does to the moral compass of people like you. It appears that you just can't tell the difference between right and wrong any more.