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Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic AT&T unveils “ridiculous” iPhone roaming plans
Fuzzy Logic AT&T unveils “ridiculous” iPhone roaming plans | AT&T unveils “ridiculous” iPhone roaming plans |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Tuesday, 02 September 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 Well, the first plan is US $119.99 per month, which gets you 100MB of data, while the $199 plan gets you 200MB of data. The Computerworld article linked above talks of a US executive that travelled to Italy for two weeks and came back to a US $5000 bill, so paying AT&T’s rates to lower such ridiculously high potential charges is certainly a good thing. $200 is a lot cheaper than $5000, after all. But with the AT&T iPhone, you have no way of popping in your own SIM card should you choose to. Yes, the whole idea of roaming is that you don’t need to change SIM cards, and have the “convenience” of using your existing phone number. But for the cost conscious, plugging in a local SIM card and paying local data rates – which are probably still expensive anyway – can still work out to be cheaper than AT&T’s $199 per month plan. You’ll have to do your homework on that one if you’re using a different brand of phone that is unlocked, thus letting you change your SIM card if you so desire. AT&T notes that at 2c per kilobyte, overseas SIM data charges might not be that cheap after all, making AT&T’s plan more attractive. But that only shows the ridiculous nature of the high cost of mobile data. Mobile data is just as important as mobile voice, and it should not be expensive! If you do have an unlocked phone and want to use a local SIM, you’d also then have to call your regular number and leave a new voicemail message that tells callers what your international number is – the number of the SIM in whichever country you’re in. But receiving calls on this SIM won’t cost you the roaming rates for incoming calls, and will probably be cheaper for the caller, too. It’s just that with the US iPhone, you don’t get this choice. You either have to pay AT&T’s roaming rates for data and voice, or turn data off altogether, simply using your iPhone as a phone and iPod. Or switch your phone off completely, which isn’t that useful in today’s connected world. Apple and AT&T, and more specifically Apple: when will you just sell the iPhone as an unlocked device, especially in the US? At least customers in other parts of the world can pay to get their iPhones totally unlocked, although that option isn’t available to all. Globalisation and the lowering of phone costs still has a long way to go!
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