Comment Popular Mechanics who? (Score 1) 514
There's just so much wrong going on with what they said.
#1 Electricity isn't data bandwidth. AT&T uses deviant methods to get people to use this data plan. They do this by forcing smart phones to come with a data plan, and even disabling wifi or just removing wifi from their phones, like the LG Arena. On top of it all, the GPS devices have no option for Offline-GPS, so that you can store the map data on your phones SD card instead of getting it through the network. When was the last time that the electric company ever forced you to use their service? You can plug devices into generators or cars.
#2 Data bandwidth isn't like a dam or a nuclear power plant, so why are we comparing it to electricity? Why not compare it to cable modems, FIOS, or DSL where it is unlimited? I doubt Verizon's FIOS is using more resources then a Verizon cell phone plan, especially if you consider that cell phone data plans exist on already established cell phone networks, like DSL does. So how is it a burden for any of these carriers?
#3 This crap happened to AOL, and that didn't work. I remember when my AOL bill was hundreds of dollars, because it was easy to go over.
#4 Isn't anyone afraid this might limit the internet? Rather then improving their infrastructure, they rather charge us more for far less? We could have had live streaming media with our portable devices, or online gaming with them.
I would like to have a smart phone without a data plan. I get free wifi hot spots from Optimum Online, so why the hell do I need a data plan? Plus, the wifi hot spots is unlimited data. I had to buy my smart phone off ebay just to avoid the monthly cost of the data plan. I wouldn't mind these new changes if I had the option to avoid the data plan when buying a smart phone.