Posted by Aurora

So by now you have probably heard about the new AT&T data plans. As it was stated it sounded like if you were currently on an unlimited plan, you could keep it, and AT&T will just consider you grandfathered in. Now here is where it gets interesting—after three years, AT&T has finally announced a tethering plan for the iPhone, which will go live with iPhone OS 4.0 is released.

However, if you want to use it, you have to leave your unlimited data plan behind, and instead move to the DataPro plan, which is $25 per month for 2GB of data, and $10 for each additional gigabyte of data used if you go over.

Now, read the fine print. AT&T is going to charge you $20 for the privilege of tethering. That $20 doesn’t get you any extra data usage—you are still relegated to the 2GB of data that you get from your $25 per month. In other words, AT&T is charging you a fee to use the data you already paid for.

From an outside prospective, that seems down right ludicrous! If you pay $25 for 2GB of data, and burn that 2GB on your iPhone, that is fine. However, if you pay $25 for 2GB of data and go through it while tethered to your computer, they expect you to pay an extra $20, even though you’ve only used 2GB of data—no more, no less—in both scenarios.

The fact that AT&T wants to charge you an extra fee just because you want to use the data that you’ve already paid for in a certain way just screams that they don’t understand true customer service. And here’s the real kicker, if you switch you can never go back to your unlimited plan once you leave it.