I’m sure everyone has heard by now, but starting next week AT&T will now have two data plans to choose from for their smartphones:
* $15 for 200MB per month
* $25 for 2GB per month
I checked my usage and I’ve been below 200MB for my 3G data usage in 5 out of the last 6 months. The one month I went over 200MB (only to about 480MB) was when I was traveling to Florida.
I like the idea of saving a few bucks a month, but I also like the safety net of having the current unlimited plan. Not that I’ve used it much, but I’ve also installed iProxy so that I can tether my MacBook Pro to my iPhone (wirelessly!) for free. The built-in tethering would be a lot more convenient, of course, but I cannot fathom why AT&T is charging another $20 for it now that their plans have data caps. Personally, if they increased the data cap to 4GB with the $20 tethering charge, I’d be all over it.
One nice thing is that if you choose the 200MB plan, AT&T will let you switch to the 2GB plan (for just the month) should you go over your allocation. You’ll have to do it manually, of course, but that is a much better deal than letting them automatically bill you another $15 for another measly 200MB of data.
But for now, I’ll be sticking with the $30 unlimited plan while I wait and see what changes iPhone OS 4.0 and the next iPhone bring. I’m expecting the phone to be announced at WWDC next week, but I don’t expect availability until July. And I’m not eligible for a new phone until December anyway.
As a test of my data usage, for the month of June I’ve disabled wifi on my iPhone and will strictly use 3G. This won’t be too much of a hardship as the AT&T coverage here in coastal Maine is excellent. I’m almost always at 5 bars and my data rates are always very good: 2394kbps down, 180kps up.
This ought to give me a good idea of what my high water mark for data consumption will be.