Money for Nothing

Thursday, June 3, 2010

It's sheer magic watching AT&T at work these days. The sleight of hand is astonishing, and I have a feeling it could only work in today's anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-truth, mathematically-challenged atmosphere.
AT&T does the unimaginable: they charge you for nothing at all.
Watch as they charge a fee on your long distance bill for not making any long distance calls!
See how they sell you a magic box for $150 that gives you cell coverage — bet you thought your monthly charges already paid for cell coverage, didn't you?
Marvel as they charge you for using voice minutes over someone else's network bandwidth! AT&T making money from Comcast's network? Brilliant!
Behold the magical, revolutionary, disappearing unlimited iPad data plan, mere weeks after its debut!
Be Astounded as they exponentially increase the cost per megabyte for 3G data, but promote it as a price cut!
Boggle at the gall of charging some customers 6¢ per megabyte, but others only 9/10ths of a cent, depending on the plan!
Witness their incredible ability to charge you twice for the same data if you use tethering!
Observe as a huge conglomerate threatens a single, lowly customer who dares to question!

Shows daily in most metropolitan cities (but not in rural areas).

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Update, about 15 minutes later:
As I went back through my various AT&T screeds, I came across a very interesting entry back in January where I said:

I think I get the gist of the AT&T "special deal" with Apple for the iPad: Apple uses a microSIM card in the pad, which means that people who are already paying a minimum of $70 a month for iPhone service — like me — can't just pull out the regular-sized iPhone SIM and put it in their iPad. They have to have a completely different data plan for the new device.

Things start to fall into place: if the rumored new iPhone uses a microSIM, just like the iPad, then we'll theoretically be able to swap SIMs. So, it makes even more sense that AT&T would take away unlimited data plans, since then you would only need one!

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