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Almost Half of AT&T’s Unlimited Customers Are Paying Too Much

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You may have heard. Unlimited data on AT&T isn’t exactly unlimited anymore. And while many are upset with the carrier’s new data throttling policy, with some going as far as taking the carrier to small claims court, nearly half of those grandfathered into an unlimited plan on AT&T would save money by downgrading to one of the carrier’s tiered data plans.

The findings come from a survey conducted by Validas – who tracks wireless data coverage – and it shows that 48.6% of those that are on an unlimited data plan don’t even cross the 300MB threshold. 300MB is the lowest amount of data that AT&T offers on its devices.

By switching to a 300MB data plan, customers could be saving $10 per month.

Almost Half of AT&T's Unlimited Customers Are Paying Too Much

However, as The Consumerist points out, there are some pitfalls that come with saving that cash.

First of all, there are more than a few customers that are teetering on the 300 MB threshold. And should they go over that line, AT&T would require a $20 payment for exceeding that 300MB limit.

So that would obviously mean that these users would have to pay closer attention to their data usage. At the moment. the worst that can happen to those on a grandfathered unlimited data plan is that AT&T will start throttling data speeds once a user exceeds 3GB.

Second, as software becomes more data intensive, so does consumption. So that means that average users will likely see their data usage increase as more and more content becomes available on mobile devices.

Still, there are users who just use their phone for light web browsing, checking email and texting and it would be those people that would be smart to take a look at a tiered data plan.

To find out where you stand, you’ll want to download AT&T’s myAT&T app which will help you track your data usage.

Via: Consumer Reports

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Chris Leckness

    03/15/2012 at 9:35 pm

    If I were still an AT&T customer, I would continue paying for it. I was doing 2-4 gb a month and it would still be worth it for piece of mind.

    • Fmoniz1

      03/16/2012 at 3:31 am

      What I don’t get is why I got the message from AT&T about going over the 3gig when I have unlimited and AT&T says that they will throttle coustomers when on HSPA+ @ 3gig and when on LTE @ 5gig, but when I checked the iPhone4 uses HSDPA and not HSPA+! So anyone with a iphone4 with unlimited on AT&T should take them to court and do something about this crap! But if they say the to are the same it’s not because HSPA+ is HSDPA with HSUPA or something like that so I’m going to call AT&T and get to the bottom of this!

  2. Michael Goldstein

    03/19/2012 at 7:28 am

    Please forgive a bit of a plug here. But this is exactly the sort of nonsense we’re trying to address with Ting (ting.com). Any sort of “unlimited” or clever plan inevitably creates tension. Providers need to protect themselves from heavy usage with fees on stuff like tethering or bizarre limits on unlimited usage. In the end, the only thing that really makes sense is to drop any sort of plan entirely, come up with fair rates per unit, actually improve the rates as customers use more, give customers tools to see exactly what they are using and to discipline themselves and then just charge people for what they use.

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