As I posted earlier, I think the new capped plans will generally save Mary and I money. We each use well less than 2 gigs of data a month (Mary’s even lower than that, at less than the 250 mb.
But really, it sounds like a good deal now … it won’t sound like such a good deal in a month. The reason: multitasking.
Starting in just a few weeks, the iPhone will be able to support multitasking. What does that mean? It means that I could leave my Skype app open and running, able to receive Skype calls anytime I’m on a 3G signal (and possibly even cutting down my voice minutes even further). If I started using Pandora, Internet radio could come to represent a big chunk of monthly bandwidth.
Even normal apps like Twitter could run in the background, amassing tweets so that there’s no load time when I check it. How much will that eat up?
Or what if Nike integrated their program with a geo-location service so that you could map your run afterwards? (They’d be crazy not to. I don’t run and I’d still sign up for that.)
All of these things mean our 3G data is going to skyrocket, as AT&T well knows, I’m sure. How much? Hard to say. According to AT&T, 98% of their users use less than the 2 gigs they’re offering. That’s going to change very quickly I bet. In a year or two, I but many more users will be pushing those limits.
I was thinking about switching to the lower data plan, but now I’m thinking it might be worth the extra dollars to keep it for a few months just to see how things go with multitasking.
Update: The New York Times has a whole article making the same point I am, except from the perspective of the app developers. Worth a read.
From what I’ve read, you can actually switch your plan from month to month, so if you are monitoring your usage, you can pick the cheapest plan at the end of your billing cycle, with no comittment/change fee/hassle.
The other option is that you might be able to request staying on the current $30/unlimited plan.
I think AT&T feared what tethering might do as well. At least the overages are the most reasonable in the industry.
We can keep the unlimited plan, but we can’t switch off of it. It’s probably going to be worth it to stay on it to just evaluate data usage with the new features. But you’re right, for the metered plans you can make the decision retroactively (though still within the billing cycle).