As required by the FTC I am declaring that I am an employee of at&t Mobility and anything I say is my own opinion and in no way expresses the opinion of at&t Mobility
Here's my beef about it all. At&t has followed Apple's lead in not divulging any information (official) to it's front lines again. We'll be getting calls all morning and will have to read it to the customers from the website or CSP without any training (offical). Again, the first "official" information I saw was posted by at&t on Facebook. Our first training will pop up on our schedules sometime today without a doubt after taking 3-6 hours of calls about it all. As I tell the customers about the "new' iPhone. Watch CNN. They'll hear about it "officially" before we do.
Actually, I heard about this from a supervisor today. They said we'd get an advisory tomorrow.
She only knew about it because she was training some new reps with a new kind of premier apparently that will apparently deal with it from now on (Premier general will only answer a few questions, and if they want more we transfer to these guys).
It was the first day of training and she doesn't know any more than that, that's sad isn't it.
I'm working for a contractor that's contracted me to synchronoss who's contracted me to att premier general.
After trying many phones, the one phone that is worthy of this spot is the 6620!!
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QMD and feature phones wont be affected.
The VPGM of my area was actually not even aware of the change until this morning before the manager call, so it wasn't just the front line that was caught off guard.
I wish there still was an unlimited option but most customers will benefit.
The only thing I have an issue with is the tethering. $20 to use the same bucket of data to tether doesn't make sense at all. 2GB of data is 2GB of data, sure you can blow through it quicker while tethering but so what? You are still capped.
At least they made grand fathering the unlimited plan very flexible.
The only thing I have an issue with is the tethering. $20 to use the same bucket of data to tether doesn't make sense at all. 2GB of data is 2GB of data, sure you can blow through it quicker while tethering but so what? You are still capped.
I'm sure there will be some consumer group looking into that. I could understand the difference between a normal data plan and a tethering data plan before. Now AT&T is just charging you extra to use the data you already pay for.
What about the rumored features of the iPhone next-gen model, such as video chat and streaming iTunes? Those 2 features alone will attribute to going over the 2GB cap, thus costing more than the soon to be old $30 unlimited data plan. What if AT&T wants customers to switch, only to have to pay more than $25/mo. Even if they're not available next week with OS 4.0, they'll eventually be available when the phone is released.
I realize the phone has built-in wifi, and the next one will too, but still, most of us on this forum know ways we can control our data usage. But does the average consumer? Think about that.
I think AT&T is not thinking right on this. Sprint just has put out a commercial everything unlimited for around 70 a month I believe. With at&t you have to pay extra for data and now they are getting rid of unlimited data for the smartphones. Not a smart move I think.
Sprint can say that plan includes unlimited everything all they want (though I don't think their ad expressly says it does, it just gets interpreted that way). It has unlimited messaging and data, 450 minutes, and their Anytime, Any Mobile feature (which only works while on Sprint's network). Any non-smartphone at AT&T will cost the same for unlimited messaging and data ($30), and the 450 Rollover plan ($39.99). Sprint's Simply Everything plan is still $99.99.
This change will be a great one for the majority of our customers, if the numbers are correct - 65% of current smartphone users will now save $15 a month without having to change their usage at all. Another 33% will save $5, again without changing their usage. The remaining 2% will now start paying a little more.
Initially, this will likely decrease ARPU as customers decrease from the old plan to the new. The lowered barrier to entry will now allow many more customers to start using smartphones that hadn't before, leading to an increase in ARPU in the long run. It's also likely to attract customers from other providers, again due to the lowered costs.
Like others have mentioned, I am a bit turned off by the tethering costs; an extra $20 just for the ABILITY to tether? Data is data; whether I use it on my phone or my laptop shouldn't matter. At least give me something for it - the corresponding 2GB for the extra $20 would be great.
Two other things that bother me about the changes:
Current tethering options are $60 for 5GB; starting Monday, it will cost $75 for 5GB, with the flexibility to pay as little as $45. Being our one previous metered offering, this is more an apples-to-apples comparison of cost than our old unlimited offerings. Shouldn't prices go down, not up?
The new minimum requirement for smartphones is the $15/200MB DataPlus package, but Quick Messaging Devices still carry a minimum $20 in messaging/data features.
From what I was told only 1% of our wireless customer base goes over 2gigs a month. So if they were to go over 2 gigs after the data switch they will be charged ten dollars for another gig of data.
I've looked at a lot of usage the past few days and have found very few people who even use a gig of data a month. And unlike the other capped data plans in the past, if there is a time when they use more, they will just buy another package to tack on to it. For the 2g package, it's only another $10 which still takes it up to $35 a month for data, but I think that's going to be happening less than anyone expects. And overall, it's going to be better in the long run for the customer than just raising the price of an unlimited package across the board for everyone. Those who need it will pay for it. Those who don't exceed that level will pay less.
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Originally Posted by ivwshane
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