Exclusive US iPhone, iPad carrier AT&T dumps unlimited data plan

AT&T, the exclusive carrier for Apple iPhone and iPad in the US, has sprung a nasty surprise.

AT&T, the exclusive carrier for Apple iPhone and iPad in the US, is phasing out its offering of unlimited wireless data for $US30 per month.

The relationship has caused plenty of headaches for US users, summed up by a question put to Apple head Steve Jobs by Wall St Journal reporter Walt Mossberg at yesterday's opening of the D8 conference.

"Steve, we love our iPhones... but our concern is that we can't make a phone call on it," Mossberg said.

"Is someone working on that?"

Jobs said Apple worked exclusively with AT&T because they had "been investing billions of dollars in the last couple of years to create a great network" and he wanted the iPhone to be a "world phone".

When Apple released the iPad in America, one of the decisions that surprised many onlookers was a deal cut with AT&T that allowing iPad owners to opt out of 12-month or two-year plans in favour of month-by-month prepaid plans.

Australian telcos are offering the same surprisingly generous deals to their iPad customers.

But now, iPad users in the US are finding out how taking up the new prepaid option is going to hurt them.

And how.

Current customer can keep their plans which offer unlimited downloads for $US30 a month, but if they're on a new one, they now have these much, much less desirable options:

- A plan called DataPlus will provide 200MB of data for $US15 per month. If you go over, you pay another $US15 for 200 more megabytes. AT&T says this plan will suffice for people who surf the web, send email and use applications like Facebook. They claim the data allowance is enough for more than 1000 emails, hundreds of web pages and 20 minutes of streaming video.

- A plan called DataPro will provide 2GB of data per month (10 times more than DataPlus) for $US25 per month. If you go over, you pay another $US10 for one more gigabyte. AT&T says 98 per cent of smart phone users use less than 2GB, although they make no mention of how much data the average iPad user chews through in a month.

- If you want to "tether" your phone to your laptop to give the computer internet access through AT&T's network, that will cost you another $US20 per month, down from the current $US30. iPhones will be able to tether for the first time this summer after a software upgrade. (Some users have hacked their phones to enable tethering already.)

The prices are in addition to the voice part of the plan, which costs at least $US40 per month, plus taxes and fees that vary by jurisidiction. Data use over wi-fi does not count towards the limits.

Executives at AT&T and Verizon Wireless have talked for months about the need to switch to metered billing as a means to reduce congestion and better manage their networks.

"Clearly, the current unlimited data usage model in the US market is not profitable in the long term as data usage is expected to continue," FBR Capital Markets analyst David Dixon said in a report.

- with Marketwatch