{"id":539805,"date":"2010-04-22T09:57:30","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T13:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100421\/1445459132.shtml"},"modified":"2010-04-22T09:57:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T13:57:30","slug":"if-flat-rate-mobile-data-plans-are-so-bad-why-do-operators-keep-launching-new-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/539805","title":{"rendered":"If Flat-Rate Mobile Data Plans Are So Bad, Why Do Operators Keep Launching New Ones?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On its quarterly conference call, AT&#038;T&#8217;s CFO once again talked up how the company needed to<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/connectedplanetonline.com\/3g4g\/news\/att-mobile-billing-models-0421\/index.html\">move away from flat-rate mobile data plans<\/a> because its networks are being overwhelmed by traffic from a small percentage of its users. This rhetoric &#8212; which is really just trying to warm up the market for future price increases &#8212; comes despite figures showing that AT&#038;T&#8217;s data revenues are increasing, while its <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20091217\/1805097415.shtml\">network investment is decreasing<\/a>. On some level, if an operator like AT&#038;T wants to try to force through higher prices by increased flat rates or usage-based pricing, go right ahead; we&#8217;ll see just how the market reacts. But all of their talk about their poor overwhelmed networks would go down a little bit better if they wouldn&#8217;t decry flat-rate plans in situations like this, while they launch cheap flat-rate unlimited plans at the same time, as AT&#038;T has done <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/ipad\/3g\/\">for the iPad 3G<\/a>. If AT&#038;T&#8217;s network is already taxed and cheap data plans are to blame, why launch another one on a device that&#8217;s built to consume data?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100421\/1445459132.shtml\">Permalink<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100421\/1445459132.shtml#comments\">Comments<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20100421\/1445459132&#038;op=sharethis\">Email This Story<\/a><br \/>\n <br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=e2f8e36c8623b3638cef2e9545365efd&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=e2f8e36c8623b3638cef2e9545365efd&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/ib.adnxs.com\/seg?add=24595&#038;t=2\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=YBYrSuup8EQ:M4x_89G8OEQ:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?i=YBYrSuup8EQ:M4x_89G8OEQ:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=YBYrSuup8EQ:M4x_89G8OEQ:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/techdirt\/feed\/~4\/YBYrSuup8EQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On its quarterly conference call, AT&#038;T&#8217;s CFO once again talked up how the company needed to move away from flat-rate mobile data plans because its networks are being overwhelmed by traffic from a small percentage of its users. This rhetoric &#8212; which is really just trying to warm up the market for future price increases [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6722,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}