AT&T to require smartphone data plans starting September 6th
AT&T subscribers, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that as of September 6th, AT&T will begin requiring that all smartphones sign up for a smartphone data plan. The good news is that customers with smartphones purchased prior to September 6th with non-smartphone data plans will be grandfathered in and will not have to upgrade their current plans. Note that if you currently use a feature phone with a data plan and you upgrade to a smartphone on or after September 6th, you will not be able to keep your current MediaNet plan.
We’ve been hearing rumblings to this effect for a few weeks now but as of this morning it’s 100% confirmed thanks to an internal email from one of our ninjas. AT&T’s claimed reasoning behind the move: to ensure customers receive a predictable bill each month. Mmm hmm. Note that this only applies to smartphones purchased from AT&T or a dealer of course, so those of you who opt for unlocked handsets should be unaffected. Hit the jump for the internal email circulated today at AT&T.
Beginning September 6, 2009, customers who activate or upgrade to a Smartphone will need to sign up for an appropriate data plan. Existing Smartphone customers active prior to September 6, 2009 will be grandfathered and exempt from the new policy.
Why we are making this change?
We want our customers to have the best possible experience with their Smartphones. A predictable bill is a key factor in customer satisfaction, so effective September 6, 2009 Smartphone customers will need to subscribe to a data plan, as the vast majority of customers already do. Data plans let customers fully utilize their device, without the worry of bill shock.How we will ensure an extraordinary customer experience?
The sales representative is the customer’s expert resource in helping select the right device for their needs. When a customer does not want a data plan, we will position other devices in our industry leading portfolio for the customer to choose from, as many devices do not require a data plan.Action Required:
Sales Managers will review the Know the Facts, Job Aid, and FAQs (found under Related Links) with their sales teams and ensure all sales representatives fully understand the new policy and how to position the Smartphone data requirement to customers. A Sales Coaching Session will be available on September 5, 2009 (document to be distributed in advance).
Just like momma said, ” Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t make it right.”
Just because they are doing this now, doesn’t mean it can’t be changed.
I’m going to write Senator Herb Kohl and let him know I support him.
@elizabiz I am wondering why she wanted to change phones on line? When I want to change a phone I swap a sim. Done. Who cares what it shows on line?
To people who say $30/mo is a small amount of money there should be nothing to make fuss over:
If I had a million dollar and somebody stole $10 out of my pocket, no amount of sugarcoating will change the fundamental fact that he robbed me of my money. I don’t care if he stole $10 or $1, or one penny for that matter. Stealing is stealing.
As such, giant phone corporation pushing to its customers what they don’t need is WRONG no matter how small impact should that make to the customer’s financial status.
Why would I need 3g when I can perfectly be happy with WiFi? Why can’t I choose to have data plan should I really need it? Why can’t I decide it for myself what I need and what I don’t need? And who are you to tell me I shouldn’t get angry over it because it’s only a small amount of money anyway?
It’s not about the money, it’s about the principle.
Whether the chicken or the egg came first is not important. What is important is it’s all about money and controlling you to get it. You are therefore wrong, (have it backwards) and at the bottom of the foundation of American work energy (Mexicans and minorities generally before middle class became the workers too supporting the ultra-rich and the broken poor) $30 is a ton of money. The Great Professor called this Relativity and relativity was well known before he connected space to time measurements through E=mc2….it’s really E=m+{a}c2 if you look at resent data on line they are shoving down your brain proving the concept of Karma. It shows that if you control a person’s time…you control their space….and if you control their space….you control their time to control them.
Wake up America. If you buy an AT&T Go Phone, put $50 on it, you cannot turn off AT&T’s internet access using the phone EVEN IF YOU SPEND THE TIME TO CALL AT&T AND HAVE THE SERVICE REMOVED from your phone since you cannot use the Go Phone supplied to do so. They refuse to do it and we called several times trying.
Here is what AT&T says about it and remember we are talking about a Go Phone for children and others without the needed credit to get a contract or the ability to afford one, not a Smart phone.
AT&T said:
“Why we are making this change? (Forcing Smart phone customers to pay for data services when they don’t need it.)
We want our customers to have the best possible experience with their Smart phones. A predictable bill is a key factor in customer satisfaction, so effective September 6, 2009 Smart phone customers will need to subscribe to a data plan, as the vast majority of customers already do. Data plans let customers fully utilize their device, without the worry of bill shock.”
Shi*, what a lie. What about accidental use made by a phone DESIGNED to cause accidental data use?
When we let corporations control us through lies, deception, and non-logical statements like this that removes all logic we deserve to be harmed and controlled for our stupidity. AT&T and other rich people have the right to control you if you are that stupid because you would hurt them if you had the chance given control. You will see Life sides with the satlite builders and space explorers because Life supports their children, not the idiot’s. So what are you going to do about it?
Just remember one thing about nothing. You could not have nothing unless you had something to create nothing, and that’s Life. It was there first to create time, and it will use time to remove the weak and stupid.
How bad is this situation? Hit the left button next to the OK (or enter) middle location button, the easiest button to press and hard not to press by accident, and it opens the browser. If you do not notice this your $50 will still be gone in a few hours. I had a bill for internet services before I left the AT&T store because the sales man did just this setting up the phone and had I not noticed it ONLY because I asked a question about the symbols and another sales man being a long time cell phone user noticed it. I still have to pay the bill even though it happened setting up my phone in the AT&T store.
This is beyound a scam, it’s a crime in a lawless Country/World. Well…not quite lawless….not if E=m+{a}c2 and O=E=W=T ©JFH^^. You cannot break a real law. But you can break the rules using real laws. Wp=SxT{a}S/T is E=m+{a}c2 and also F=m+{a}a, which is F=ma corrected proven by the moon’s correct obit measurements.
E=mc2, F=ma, and V=I/R are the same exact equations without the observer asymmetry time added. Well, looks like I’ve got a phone to hack. And you have some new math to learn if you like Physics like me. “Why does E=mc2?” It doesn’t measured from the strong force. And why should we care? Because it hurts if we don’t.
Mr. Higgs
Well said Div. Taking your statement in reverse direction, they will charge $30 to all customers who don’t want it. For every 1000 customers, they make $30K. Now consider the fact that there are 78MILLION subscribers.
Even if 20MILLION users pay $30 for nothing, AT&T makes f**king 600 US MILLION DOLLARS for free.
Just for info, in April 2009 (before this policy), they earned $3.2 BILLION dollars for data usage.
Who doesn’t like free money !!
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=26752
Yes… that’s a great incentive. Who doesn’t like free money? (shakes his head..) I wrote Randel Stephenson an email. I think think this is beyond ridiculous. I feel very strongly about this. I’m being forced to fix a broken device, my tilt, instead of buying a new one right now because of this. I may still be tempted to move over to cricket. This is a wide reaching thing that all the cell companies are starting to do. I do believe that government action maybe needed.
Someone posted the FCC information on filing a complaint and contacting your congressional leaders. I believe that we’re going to need to take action on this on a wide scale otherwise, they’re going to do this and everyone is going to be paying ALOT more money.
I also suggest that EVERYONE subscribes to this thread as it helps keep us business people in the loop on this one.
Hey tilt users,
Call up AT&T and give them IMEI of your old broken phone. They might ask for your phone model number, so tell them and continue using tilt. It works like a charm
it is stupid that att will charge you 30 extra ontop of everything . oh this also does not include unlim texing for the data plan.. lol..and i also thought if i got a smart phone off ebay and just used it without data plan i could.. wrong att will find out what phone u hve from the simcard and start bulling you the data plan.. says so right in the bill. ( :-\ )
You are right. I think DSL should be free too. I already pay for the landline voice service. I should also be able to get free IT service from my DSL carrier and they should help me figure out my game boy and my TV and what I should cook for dinner. McDonald’s should not charge me for my Big Mac if I buy fries. Call William Shatner and name your price. I have been paying for my PDA service for years. You think Ford or GM is going to give you a new ar for $3,000.?
Bad Troll. Baaad Troll !!!
@ Richard Garret,
DSL comes in tiers. Fast-to-slower at different rates. This is like your provider charging for the premium tier for any speed regardless of needs or wants Some will not be affected, others will fork over the extra cash and put up with it.
The majority will become resentful and look for and find a more reasonable alternative and leave. Many leaving an unpaid bill that the greedy provider will have to deal with.
As for the McDonalds analogy, this would be like McDonalds Charging for an entire meal when all the customer wants is a Big Mac or fries or a coke only. the result being many people walking off with Mc Donalds losing out.
As for your other ludicrous analogies, you figure them out.
Get a life, get a wife, and go back under your bridge and continue harassing those goats, you naughty, naughty Troll.
you are right N!M but since Sept 6 (the day policy became active), we 4 members of the family plan are using smart phones (iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, Blackberry 7xxx sumthing) and a non-smart phone W580i. Still we pay $29 per person on a NationTalk 1400 plan. NO DATA PLAN !!
They inform u first that they will charge you, but tell them u r using a non-smart phone.
Worked for me and others.
Hi,
I had similar problems in that I had a smartphone obtained last August, and wifi was a dream; I installed a pgm called Pointui, which was constantly accessing the Internet for new headlines, which I was not aware of so I received the high usage alert email from att; in order to remove the charges I agreed to take the data plan. The service rep never told me about grandfathering, so when I called back to ask them to take the plan off the phone, I was told that it couldn’t be done. So, I told them that I would use a non smartphone and they took off the data plan. My question is, is this still working for you? Can I switch my sim card back to my lg incite and not be detected by att as using the smartphone again?
thanks,
Joanne
I’ve written to AT&T twice now. Got
a reply phone call – trying to see if
they could find a phone that would
meet my needs – and did not have a data
plan. Since the phone that I want has
a data plan, that could not be accomplished.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE…. ask everyone
that you know to write to the FCC… if
only a few people do so, they won’t do
anything. If hundreds and thousands
write, that will get FCC’s attention.
Here’s the link for the FCC form to
lodge this type of complaint:
https://esupport.fcc.gov/sform2000/formB!input.action?form_page=2000B
I’m all for companies making profits –
that’s one reason why they are in business…
And, this type of practice is becomming
more and more common – mainly because
we are all sheep…. We complain to
each other and write about it online -
and do nothing. Complaining to our friends
may feel good – AND – unless we complain
where it CAN make a difference it’s kinda
like watching a show about dieting and
expecting to lose weight.
Please, write to the FCC and write about
this issue wherever you can. Thanks
Karen
The mandatory fee for a data plan is an outrage to those of us who want to use only the non-internet features of a smart phone. I understand that cell phone companies may not want to subsidize the cost of a smart phone for users that aren’t going to use the full features of that phone. That seems fair. But give me the choice of using or not using a data plan. Given the number of users who seem to want, essentially, a PDA that has phone/texting capability, I’m surprised some enterprising company hasn’t stepped up to provide that type of device.
I agree with Karen’s post. I think a complaint to FCC is the right logical step here by all those who do not agree with this policy change. Furthermore, we should send a copy of the complaint letter to our local lawmakers as well. AT&T was the only company what allowed use of smart phones (other than iPhones) without requiring a data plan, while all their competitors had this requirement all along. So, the fact company has made this change in the policy is not so shocking to me, but the manner in which they implemented this change is somewhat rude. They should have notified all those customers (I’m one of them) who would be impacted by this change. In other words, any customers who were eligible to upgrade to a smartphone prior to Sep 6, 2009 should have been given a heads up so they could exercise the “grandfather” option. I certainly would have done so. Now, I can’t upgrade couple of lines on my account to a smartphone with WiFi feature so I could use the internet on the phone without using the 3G network. In a way this seems like AT&T is trying to force non-iPhoners to pay for the expansion of their highly hyped 3G network that clearly doesn’t work as fast as expected.
Heh. E-Bay (AT&T) 3G Network Speed not as described. Too True.
Ok so continuing my research as a grandfathered person who now pays $80 TOTAL per month for 2 lines with 700 shared anytime mins and 2 smartphones, both on pay per KB option, and 200 SMS on my line only (I use about 100 SMS per month), I have concluded that these wireless companies are banking big bucks on the fact that customers have no idea/curiosity how much data they are actually using and customers so greatly fear overages that they will fork out the cash to avoid them even when it makes no sense at all to do that. I just got back from 2 business trips (have had over 5 trips this year, one international) where I had wifi in my hotel room but no free wifi in the conference rooms of the hotel, the shuttle, or the airport/transit systems. I connected to 3G whenever I needed to check my gmail, sync my outlook calendar/contacts/inbox, browse the web, look up a place on google maps, or see the weather through weatherbug (free program) on my winmo smartphone. I sent and received all the messages I needed to and got all the info I needed to. My total for each trip? Less than $5 each time, consistently. That is using my smartphone as a traveling business user (you’d think that would be a person who needed to pay for unlimited 3G data, wouldn’t you?) – for a whole year still costs less than what they are charging per month.
People have got to wake up. It really is in the Billions of dollars that this stupidity and failure to do simple math – addition – will cost us consumers.
Sorry I didn’t mean to write “stupidity”, I meant to write “fear of overages”. We’ve been taken for a ride, that doesn’t make us stupid. But we have to wake up now.
Sorry multiple posts – just wanted to add that this is a classic shell game form of bamboozlement…
Customer doesn’t know how to disable 3G on wifi-capable smartphone, looks at bill, sees huge amounts of data being used, thinks: “Thank God for my $30/month data plan, think what this would cost at $2/MB!”. But they are routing all data through 3G when it could just as easily go through wifi.
Analogy: Let’s say in your home you have 2 possible methods of voice communication with the outside world: land line and cell phone. You pay a flat fee for your land line, and the cell phone is billed either by the minute or as a flat fee for unlimited minutes – and you are forced to have the unlimited voice minutes plan for your cell phone in this analogy. You look at your bill and see that you have thousands of minutes’ use on your cell phone, and think “I am certainly one of the ones who needs an unlimited plan, look at this usage” – but what you don’t realize is that every call that comes in is being routed to your cell phone instead of your landline – and all along you could have changed this setting with a few clicks but didn’t realize it. You of course keep your landline because you use it for something else, say, sending occasional faxes or paging each other in different parts of the house. And you go on paying month after month, year after year for unlimited cell phone minutes. But how many cell phone minutes would you actually be using if all your calls went to your flat-fee landline first?
The wifi-3G setup mirrors this analogy and is a MASSIVE scam, and almost brilliant, playing perfectly on consumers’ love for shiny new things, lack of knowledge about how they actually work, and fear of overages (and also a little, feelings of prestige as “high-volume users”, or “business users”).
If you have wifi hotspots at your work and home, and ever wonder how much 3G data you would actually NEED to use in a given day that, turn off your 3G for a few days, turn it on and off when you need it, and have a look at what you’d actually be using with wifi as the default.
I did have to be smart to figure this out. I have an advanced degree and do not think people who didn’t see it are stupid. I do feel sheepish for being taken for a ride for so long, though. I bet it’s a pretty sweet time to be an AT&T executive right now.
I’ve been a long time customer of AT&T and this is by far one of the most egregious things they have done in recent memory. This amounts to all airlines making every seat first class and cable companies upgrading all of us to premium packages, whether we wanted them or not.
I just submitted my complaint with the FCC. I am also filing a complaint with the attorney general and assorted state and federal politicians.
After checking out the at&t website, i realized that they aren’t really limiting just smartphones, but phones with a qwerty keyboard and a touch screen! This sucks, its like at&t is putting a tax on having a cool, usefull phone!