Megabytes, kilobytes, and gigabytes are commonly used terms of data today. Digital data is stored in 1’s and 0’s. Therefore, a 1 is a 1 and a 0 is a 0 and each takes up equally the same space and resource to process, store, and transmit. That is, unless you’re AT&T. In the table below, AT&T charges different rates for different plans. You can get 200 MB of data for $15, or 2 GB of data for $25. But notice that there’s an enterprise plan (for companies) and a tethering plan (for connecting to another device like a laptop).
Isn’t 2 GB of data just 2 GB of data? Not according to AT&T.
For consistency sake, lets look at the 2 GB monthly data options
- $25 for 2 GB of data for personal use
- $40 for 2 GB of data for enterprise use
- $45 for 2 GB of data for personal use with tethering
- $60 for 2 GB of data for enterprise use with tethering
The differences between these two options are (1) whether it’s for personal use or company use, and (2) whether you tether or not. The one constant factor is that you’re paying differently for the same 2 GB of data. In theory, personal users will use less data than an enterprise user (not connected to a corporate network and downloading company emails). I think personal users who listen to Pandora and download YouTube videos use up more data. Secondly, people who tether use more data. Again, it’s possible that by hooking your phone up to a laptop, you’re using more data.
I suspect AT&T does this because they’re assuming that you’re not going to use all your data, hence no rollover data plans. As a personal user who pays for the 2 GB plan, I use about 400 MB a month. If all subscribers, on average, use half of the data and leave the rest unused, AT&T only needs to build a network to support half saving on the expense side. This is comparable to a buffet restaurant hoping that on average, people don’t eat that much. This is also similar to the airline industry where they hope that a percentage of people don’t show up for the flight.
What should be done
If AT&T wants to better serve its customers, it should create tiered data plans where data is considered data no matter how its used. Customers should be paying for the data they use, regardless of what mechanisms they use to transmit that data.