At 30 May 2008 12:01:18 +0000 Mike S. wrote:

> >AT&T's definitions seem no more or less arbitrary than Microsoft's.
>
> But they often don't make sense.


I agree completely- my point was only that AT&T has no obligation to accept
anyone else's arbitrary definition! ;-)

> Look, for instance at the Nokia E series.
>
> The E51 (not sold by AT&T but used by many on its network) is a Symbian OS
> Smartphone with full web browser, PDA features, etc ... but due to lack of
> QWERTY keyboard is considered a dumbphone (see the threads on the AT&T
> Customer Support Forums on this). Thus using a $15 Media Net add-on would
> not make waves.


True- personally I think the idea of separate plans for smart/dumb phones
makes little sense, since both are "unlimited" plans. Charging the
smartphone owners twice as much because their phones "usually" consume more
data is akin to charging fat people double at a buffet restaurant because
their likely to eat more.

If AT&T wants to base the price on usage, then simply cap the cheaper plan-
i.e. "unlimited" for $30, and, say, 1GB (probably more than enough for a
dumbphone) for $15 rather than arbitrary value judgements on how much data
a device typically uses.


> Virtually the same phone as the E50/E51, but with a QWERTY keyboard
added,
> are the recently discontinued E61/E61i/E62 series. Although these have
> no design features that would make them consume any more bandwidth than
an
> E50/E51, these are classified as PDA's and technically require the
> twice-as-expensive PDA plan.


Yes. Very silly.