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BY EVAN THOMAS ANCHOR NATHAN BYRNE AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson says he regrets ever offering unlimited data plans, saying it cost the carrier a lot to maintain the network for unrestricted use. Here are his comments from a wireless conference this week. "I wish we had moved quicker to change the pricing model, to make sure that people who were consuming the bandwidth were paying for the bandwidth. We had a model where the high-end users were being subsidized by the low-end users. We got that model straight." Now, except for certain users grandfathered in on their old unlimited data plans, AT&T uses a tiered data price model. CNET says it's a balancing act. "Carriers are taking in billions from tiered data plans, but increasingly users are actually using up a higher percentage of their data allowances. That means more network traffic without more revenue to compensate..." Critics say, it's not like AT&T's doing poorly. 9to5 Mac reports tiered pricing is actually making the company loads of money. "AT&T discontinued its unlimited data plan in 2010 and moved to a pricey tiered data plan, which it has since reprised and restructured. The plans paid off, because the company earned a whopping $6.1 billion in revenue during Q1 alone." Indeed, Stephenson says he doesn't regret offering the first iPhone on AT&T back in 2007. iDownloadBlog suggests that choice is largely responsible for the network's revenue and general success. "It's feasible to assume that if AT&T hadn't signed <b>...</b> |
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AT&T Chief Calls Unlimited Data a Mistake
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