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dataconnect posts

AT&T's Data Connect overage rates much lower now, still too high

by Chris Ziegler posted Nov 12th 2009 @ 5:18PM

In a perfect world, we'd one day all be guzzling from an endless font of virtually free bandwidth, streaming 1080p video straight to our WXGA handsets with stereo Bluetooth beamed straight to implants in our ear canals. Turning our attention back to reality for a moment, though, and the situation is a little more bleak: carriers are plagued with crappy, overloaded networks, backhaul issues, and a 4G rollout that could easily span a decade. To that end, caps are still firmly in place on US carriers' so-called "unlimited" laptop data plans, and overage rates make the occasional slip-up nasty enough to bankrupt you if you're not offered clemency from customer service. The good news is that AT&T's data overage rates have dropped significantly as of November 6, going from 49 cents per megabyte to 5 cents on the $60 5GB plan and 10 cents on the (nearly useless) $40 200MB plan. That still means you're paying over $50 for each gigabyte of overage -- but as AT&T points out, it's a hell of a lot better than the $500 you were paying before.

[Thanks, Kal]

AT&T DataConnect overage: $480 per gigabyte

by Chris Ziegler posted Oct 4th 2008 @ 6:55PM

As much as we hate that true, no-strings-attached unlimited data plans are being killed off one by one, we appreciate that carriers have had the common decency (well, sometimes) to impose caps as "soft" ones -- going over repeatedly might irk 'em into throttling your bandwidth or tearing up your contract, but at least you wouldn't be getting a bankruptcy-inducing bill in the mail without any warning. Watch yourself, boys and girls, because that's now changed on AT&T, where the one and only domestic DataConnect plan offered for laptops -- 5GB for $60 -- now features an overage charge of $0.00048 per kilobyte. Running the numbers, that works out to a staggering $480 per extra gigabyte -- and on a laptop, a gig isn't hard to burn through at all. We guess AT&T would probably either cut you off or give you a call if you went way over, but by then, you've dug yourself a pretty deep hole. It's all pretty ridiculous, and we're hoping they're only a few lawsuits away from reconsidering the way they're handling this.

[Thanks, Bill]

Update: Several tipsters have written in to let us know that AT&T shuts you down after you've racked up $100 in overage, which seems awfully arbitrary. If we're seriously going to keep going with this per-kilobyte model, can we get a configurable hard cap or something? Thanks, everyone!