AT&T Smartphones required to have data plans

On top of the monthly subscription of an AT&T Mobility cell phone subscriber, the company is requiring customers who are going to purchase smartphones or upgrading their handsets to smartphones to subscribe to a monthly data plan. This would add $30 on top of their voice plan. The Telco has set September 6 to be the date for it to take effect. This requirement won’t be impacting existing customers until though unless they upgrade their handset or their plan.

AT&T officially released this statement: “Smartphone users tend to consume a higher amount of data services, like advanced email, mobile Web, applications and more. Being able to take full advantage of these features without having to worry about a fluctuating or unusually high bill generally leads to greater customer satisfaction, so effective Sept. 6, smartphone customers will need to subscribe to a data plan, as the vast majority of customers already do.”

There are about nine million people in the United Kingdom, which is about 15% of the entire population, who suffer from hearing disability mostly permanent and disabling hearing loss. The estimated ballpark figure ranges from 22 million deaf and hard of hearing people to as high as 36 million hard of hearing and deaf people worldwide. If we further categorize them there are only about a few million who are “deaf” and the remainder are hard of hearing and cannot use a mobile phone.

For about 30 years this group of our worldwide society has had to pay unused call time because of the Telco’s required plans. They could not do anything about it since they need their mobile phones for business or personal needs. With this upcoming additional service charge for smartphone applications what would this group of people have to say? A lot of people have used their phones in accessing the internet and will use it more because of the trend in mobile industry. What do people have to say about this fee?

Early feedback by consumers says that this will probably produce a lot of fallout. Cingular attempted the same thing which led the Telco to cancel their requirement. They have required data service plans for Apple iphones. When Cingular announced the same thing fallout followed and the requirement had to be dropped. Sprint and Nextel has had this plan on top of their voice calls usually offered to people in business who use the internet on their phones. It has received both bad and good feedback.
AT&T has put this feature in their platform as a means to improve the use of smartphones for their clients. AT&T is also about business. Smartphones have the capability to do all high tech surfing and a data plan is ideal for this. If surfing the internet through your phone is charged by the packet of data being sent and received it would be much more expensive compared to having an unlimited plan of surfing. This plan can be an advantage to people who really use their smartphones for web surfing but not advantageous for those who have smartphones but rarely use web surfing.

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