AT&T 3G Data is 300 Times More Expensive Than Wired Cable Modem Data

If you’ve been following the tale of AT&T Wireless’ 3G data plans price changes, you might think that AT&T is the only one with such a ridiculous tiered price structure. I agree with the pundits ragging on AT&T. But, have you see Verizon’s 3G plans?

Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband Plans

Where AT&T charges $15 for 250MB of data in a month, Verizon charges, wait for it, $40 for 250MB over a month. A pre-paid day plan sets you back $15 for one day of 3G access with a 100MB limit! AT&T’s plans look downright reasonable compared to Verizon’s. Since both AT&T and Verizon use 250MB as the bottom of their monthly plans, let’s use it as one unit of data for comparison to other plans.

The old plan provided 5GB over a month at $30. 5GB = 20 units of data (5GB/250MB). The new 2GB plan costs $25 per month. 2GB = 8 units of data. And, finally, the 250MB plan costs $15 per month. 250MB = 1 unit of data. Now, let’s do some simple division to get price per unit of data:

$30/20 = $1.5 per 250MB unit
$25/8 = $3.125 per 250MB unit
$15/1 = $15 per 250MB unit

So, the 250MB $15/month plan costs 15 times more per data unit than the old 5GB plan and 5 times more per data unit than the 2GB plan.

Now, let’s get really silly. Time Warner has been experimenting with tiered wired cable modem broadband. They are talking about capping at 250GB per month and will probably charge about $50 per month for that. 250GB is equivalent to 1000 250MB data units. So,

$50/1000 = 5 cents per 250MB data unit

If you compared AT&T’s 250MB per month plan to this:

15/0.05 = 300

Yes, that’s right AT&T’s 250MB per month plan cost 300 times more than cable modem data (assuming a cap of 250GB at $50 month).

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.