At 21 Feb 2008 18:27:55 -0500 Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:

> > I find it amusing to see all the news reports of how the $99.99
> > unlimited plan is a "price war." Yeah, it's a price war to get
> > subscribers to increase their monthly expenditure for wireless.
>
> I work with a guy (salesman) who, last year, had a 2000 minute plan
> (don't know with whom)--and every month he was 1000 minutes over.
>
> Let's see, that was probably a $125/month plan, and $0.25 overage, so he
> was probably $375/month.
>
> No, I'd say plenty of people will eat this up.


Agreed. My cousin, a consultant back east who uses 3000 or so daytime
minutes a month is still on a grandfathered ATTWS GSM Charter plan (a $99
unlimited plan they originally used to con suckers from switching from
their excellent TDMA/analog network to their, at the time, very crummy GSM
one.)

Since the merger he's been stuck buying unlocked handsets to upgrade since
the "new" AT&T can't sell him a subsidized phone that'll accept his blue
"old" AT&T SIM, and won't switch him to a "new" orange AT&T SIM unless he
takes a new plan.

Ironically, I'll bet he'll probably switch to Ve izon- Verizon has a little
better reception in his neighborhood, and he uses a Verizon EVDO laptop
card for mobile data- it works on his boat, where the AT&T 3G card he tried
first doesn't always reach- (apparently "Extended UMTS" didn't make it to
Rhode Island!) ;-) IIRC, Verizon will knock the PC card rate down from
$79 to $59 if you also have a voice plan. The $20 savings didn't justify
dumping the AT&T Charter plan, but when Verizon offers the $99 unlimited,
he can port over and save the $20/month on the data card.