I have a coworker who use to work for verizon and hes been in contact with his old buddies teasing them about the verizon iphone launch and how little they will get paid on it and so he has been getting some of this information from them but we also confirm it through websites that are not biased like:
Cnet.com
phonescoop.com
mobiledia.com
phonearena
so I've been a customer for 10 years but only an employee for 3. It wouldn't make sense for me to be a loyal customer for at&t and go work for another company. customers always ask "what phone do you use?" ...uh oh i have an AT&T _______ haha.
but anyway like I said I'm AGAINST at&t's decisions with the tethering being required on a shell accessory. And I work for an authorized retailer so I dont receive a dime of pay from "AT&T Mobility" the company. I have a $30 unl plan and i plan on keeping it forever because of technology like this that is always getting better. that said I track my data usuage pretty regularly with *DATA# send or *3282# send and I've never used more than 1GB in a month and I use pdanet everyonce in awhile and am on the internet probably 4 hours a day on my phone at work, kinda a perk of the job getting to be on my phone and not get in trouble. So that's my other problem with all the complaints about the 2GB and 4GB options. 98% of at&t smartphone customers have NEVER gone over 2GB and 60% of them have never gone over 200MB even so at&t's approach makes sense. Verizon offered the $15 150MB option for 3 months to stay with the industry but them "temporarily" took away that option at the end of January. And now there are thousands of potential ship jumpers that are rethinking because they have 4 lines on their account all with the $15 data plan that would be doubled if they switch.
Every carrier has publicly announced that they will be going to a tiered data plan like at&t its just a matter of when. Some carriers are tossing around the idea of making it more like home DSL and charge more for speeds once its all an LTE network.
Just here to be informative to help you guys out in your decisions. Just dont follow the mob mentality of the Deathstar is screwing their customers and actually do some research and see if they really are of if they are just moving in the industry ahead of others. There's a lot of "tech" guys who hate not having unlimited for 30 but there are probably 3-4 times more people sending thank you letters to at&t for letting them get into the smartphone market without taking out a second mortgage to pay for their family plan with 4 smartphones on it.
And Sprint and Verizon have both sent letters to high data usuage smartphone owners warning them that if they dont lower their monthly data usuage they will be subject to their line of service being terminated. It's the top 5% of those customers. And that guy was right its a soft cap which means there is not auto cutoff during the month for data usuage but "subject to termination" at&t only had that on their laptop aircard back in the day. Now they just give you a GIG for $10 if you go over.
I challenge all you smartphone users to check your data usage with *3282# send on at&t and im not sure about the other companys but find out and if you've never done it you'll be surprised. every customer I've dealt with in store has been shocked when they swear up and down they've never used LESS than 3GB's and I pull up their last three bills and they average 300-500MB and haven't even seen a GB of usuage then they start backpeddling saying well i was out of town and uhh.... oh your data doesn't work outside your hometown? oh that's right it does. and you weren't out of town for three months obviously looking at your call history.
anyway Thanks for reading and ask me anything you want if its too "insider" i may just PM you.