By now there’s been ample time to digest the consequences of AT&T’s 2 gigabyte data cap initiated earlier this summer. Would it be too little? Are the prices fair? These were some of the questions that only time and usage could aptly answer. Well, I’ve done the time, and I’ve certainly put in my fair share of mileage on my iPhone 4 to be able to draw a conclusion.
At $25 for 2,048 MB of data, that amounts to about .01220703 cents per megabyte. So a little over a penny per megabyte. Sounds fair enough. But cost was never the huge factor in my worries about AT&T’s new guidelines, real world usage was. In other words, how would my normal usage be affected by these new rules? Would I always have the data cap in the back of my mind causing me to stress unnecessarily? That’s something I didn’t want to have to put up with…
Well time and usage have indeed provided a satisfying answer to the primary question at hand. That answer is a resounding no. In real world day-to-day usage, the data cap has failed to impact me at all. In fact, it’s saved me about $10 dollars a month since I maintain a family plan with another iPhone user – my wife.
The worry factor is a thing of the past as well, because not once have either of us come close to going over our allotted amount of data. And even if one of us did happen to venture over the 2GB for some bizarre reason, the $10 we saved from the cheaper plan would essentially pay the fee for the extra data anyway
I consider myself to be a power user. I’m jailbroken and I take my iPad wherever I go. Hence, I use MyWi constantly to feed my iPad’s Wi-Fi connection while out on the road. Why pay extra for the iPad 3G model along with another data plan when the iPhone already provides you with such generous capabilities?
I also happen to be a moderate Pandora user, a constant emailing, app-downloading, and blogging data hog. Regardless of all of that activity, I think I’ve broken the 1 GB threshold, perhaps once. Granted, the ubiquity of Wi-Fi has helped my cause considerably, and while at home I stay on Wi-Fi as well. But doesn’t everyone?
For those of you who are still riding the fence because of AT&T’s data restrictions, get off the fence already and get in the game. Eventually all of the major carriers will implement similar restrictions anyway, so you might as well get used to the thought. Indeed, I was once a skeptic, but time and usage have proven that there’s more than enough data to go around for the average user.