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!

It looks like AT&T is getting a bit more generous these days, with the company now following up its supposed plans to offer free WiFi to LaptopConnect and smartphone users with a promised 20% boost in 3G data speeds. That translates to "typical" downlink speeds of between 700 Kbps and 1.7 Mbps (up from 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps), and uplink speeds of between 500 Kbps and 1.2 Mbps (formerly 500 to 800 Kbps). To get those slightly improved speeds, however, you'll have to use one of the company's aforementioned LaptopConnect cards, and no doubt situate yourself in some prime signal real estate. What's more, AT&T says those speeds are only a taste of things to come, with it promising that peak data speeds will eventually reach 20 Mbps as it switches over to HSPA+ between 2009 and 2010.

[Via Gear Diary]

According to the Boy Genius, it's not just iPhone users that will be getting / not getting the telco's WiFi on the house -- the company has plans to offer use of its hotspots for free to Laptop Connect and smartphone users. An internal memo from the provider appears to state that effective May 20th, anyone with a $60 or higher Laptop Connect plan will be able to take a ride on AT&T's networks in 17,000 locations, and the service will be extended to smartphone users later in the year. Of course, the company hasn't exactly wowed us with its rollout of this service for iPhone customers, so don't be surprised if nothing goes the way it's planned.