01-30-2010, 04:30 AM
I just had a series of arguments with various people in the AT&T president's office about this. My son wanted to use my wife's old iPhone without a data plan. We wanted to get data blocked to the phone. AT&T swore that they would never allow this, and that all "smart" phones had to have a data plan. (Never mind that he had an old SIM card which would not support data on an iPhone 3G.)
AT&T is not consistent on this, as they will block data on "ordinary" phones, some of which have smart features.
AT&T is requiring a data plan because of all the headaches they've had with people using data on phones and running up multi-thousand dollar bills in one month. Bad PR and very angry customers. Since smart phones which use push email gobble data, I think they have tried to head this off.
But they haven't really thought it through. If a customer wants to use a smart phone without mobile data, go ahead and let them. There won't be a lot of people who bother, and I think the PR value of giving customers the option would outweigh the revenue from people you force to use a data plan and the anger from those who give up because they won't pay for one. Having an automated way to do a daily plan might even be profitable, beyond the PR value.
Good luck.
- Winston
AT&T is not consistent on this, as they will block data on "ordinary" phones, some of which have smart features.
AT&T is requiring a data plan because of all the headaches they've had with people using data on phones and running up multi-thousand dollar bills in one month. Bad PR and very angry customers. Since smart phones which use push email gobble data, I think they have tried to head this off.
But they haven't really thought it through. If a customer wants to use a smart phone without mobile data, go ahead and let them. There won't be a lot of people who bother, and I think the PR value of giving customers the option would outweigh the revenue from people you force to use a data plan and the anger from those who give up because they won't pay for one. Having an automated way to do a daily plan might even be profitable, beyond the PR value.
Good luck.
- Winston