AT&T rolls out pay-per-use PTT
At $10 / month for unlimited use of AT&T's Push To Talk service, we can buy into the value proposition; we really can. The real-time status indicators for your contacts, that Nextel-esque cool of talking at your phone rather than into it -- it's all good. So yeah, AT&T is now throwing down a new pay-per-use option that'd see a charge of $0.15 / minute for PTT use grace your bill. It comes as no surprise whatsoever that it'll be rounding those precious minutes up to the next nearest one, so -- please correct us if we're reading this incorrectly -- every press of that button is going to cost you a bare minimum of 15 cents. Basically, you start to lose out after the 66th minute (if our trusty calculator is in good working order), burying this option well into the "emergency use only" category for most folks. Like text messages, or even plain ol' voice minutes for that matter, an itchy PTT button finger could get ya in trouble mighty quick here.
Filed under: ATT
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jordan @ Feb 1st 2007 1:37PM
It's not each button press, it's the duration of the total time you use it. If you press the button 50 times in 2 minutes and 37 seconds, you are charged for 3 minutes of use. See the quote from the article:
"TT pay-per-use is charged per minute and begins when the PTT button on
the phone is pressed to initiate the session to when the end key is
pressed. If the end key is not pressed to end the call, it will
automatically time-out after 30 seconds. Minutes round up to the nearest
whole minute."
Luis @ Feb 2nd 2007 7:40PM
Cingular has a new money making button! It used to be how phones were setup to connect to their MEdia Net mall with a simple soft key press (the default soft keys were Media Mall) and some phones even have a dedicated shop button and Cingular Video button. Bleeding customers dry one button at a time.