May 18, 2009, 8:04 PM — For the first time in human history, idle speculation on a blog has been 100 PERCENT CONFIRMED by anonymously sourced details in a story from a major publication! To be specific, last week I was worrying that the all-you-can-eat-for-$30 data model was going to cause AT&T's feeble network to collapse; and this week, we learn that, to go along with whatever new low-cost version of the iPhone Apple is preparing to release, AT&T may be offering a cheaper capped data plan (according to Business Week, who heard it from consultant Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group, who heard it from someone who he's not naming).
$20 is the figure being bandied about for this cheaper plan, though significantly absent from the rumors are what exactly the bandwidth caps would be. AT&T already has tiered pricing for its Data Connect service on other smartphones; the pricing matrix is pretty baffling, but it looks as if there are $20 plans that right now have 10 megabyte monthly caps, with every megabyte over that coming in at $1.90. I would call myself an enthusiastic if not obsessive user of the iPhone's data features, and I used about 170 MB of bandwidth last month, by comparison. I think that AT&T would have to recalibrate its tiers to fit with the iPhone's data use profile, but that's still a scary low number to use for comparison.
What's most interesting to me is that the thrust of the BW story is "See, the iPhone is finally getting cheaper, just like all the analysts have said that it would!" The fact that tiered pricing and bandwidth caps are making this cheapness possible is sort of coming in under the radar. It's smart to offer tiered data as a cheaper alternative rather than imposing bandwidth caps on everyone, but I wonder how long that will last. One reader, commenting on the BW story says, "All this makes no difference to me. AT&T only gives these breaks to NEW customers." But the flipside is that existing customers (like yours truly) may be the last people to find themselves with unlimited bandwith plans. An anonymous commentor on one of my earlier posts tells their story in a similar situation: "I have an Verizon wireless card for my computer with an unlimited plan. I am a heavy internet user with 300 emails a day for work. I just noticed that my service has been extremely downgraded and after I called they told me that since I am a heavy user they downgraded my service. So I have unlimited service but the service sucks. They are doing this so they can get rid of older accounts which are truly unlimited." I'm hoping that's not me a few years down the road!
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