AT&T offers unlimited plan, includes iPhone

About 5 years ago, a company actually had an unlimited plan for $100, but was discontinued once that company was bought by another company.

Finally, back to the days when cell phone companies actually compete for your business!!!

Thank you! iPhone leads the way to put pressure on the cell phone market!!!

I wonder how this will be extended to those of us with multiple handsets on Family Talk Plans?

outrageous. $130 a month for handset usage is absurd. There needs to be a revamping of the entire phone industry. 4G/WiMax had better get here soon. Anyone know how this cost compares to places like Korea or Japan where people live on their cellphones.

ahem....yes....compared with Japan you should really stop complaining...japan is actually darn expensive- most of my school kids are on the phone all the time because they're sending free e-mails, listening to music or playing games. Calling is a rip-off. I pay 5000Y (I suppose about $50) for 62 minutes of calling. There are more expensive plans but they really don't up the number of minutes hugely. $130 a month could be great if you don't need a home phone and just go mobile!

After living in teh States for 7 years, it never stops surprising me what big cowards Americans are in the relation to companies. The cell phone plans are outrageous compared to Europe and extra services like sms, mms, and data traffic are especially expensive. On top of this, Americans gladly accept paying even for incoming minutes (unheard of in Europe), they accept the phone bills to be overloaded with surcharges and taxes. On top of it all, the services are so incredibly bad that you think you are in a 3rd world country. Where is the protest and anger? My only explanation is that the people simply haven't traveled and seen how it could be. Kinda like living in North Korea and believing the regime's propaganda or something.

Where is the protest and anger?

Protest and anger. Right, I can see it now. A bunch of 20 year olds storming the Verizon headquarters, chanting "We want better service!".

The problem is (a) demanding better service means nothing if no one offer them (you can't switch to voice your disapproval), (b) the only way to really get better plans is to have people cancel. But everyone is so in love with their cell phones that they won't be caught dead without it. So they're stuck.

So does the post above mean the japanese are even bigger "cowards"? It's called market forces.

Your post was stupid. That is all.

Once these get off the ground and I can make cheap VOIP calls these phone companies will be hurt. I just cut my landline LD in favour of Gizmo and my cell phone. If I had reliable i-net access anywhere, I'd kill the cell phone as well and use my Nokia iTablet and Gizmo as my only communication device. Of course if that 700 Mhz band gets opened up....

AT&T used to have a $100 all-you-can-eat plan several years ago but bought Cingular and it went bye-bye. IIRK, most of the AT&T network was still TDMA at the time.

People are going more and more towards the Metro PCS and myFaves types of services b/c 98% of their calling is from their own home areas. Verizon needs to drop its prices, as does every other carrier. In fact, I just read that Sprint is supposedly going to have a plan at $60/mo.

I pay $40 right now for a myFaves 300 min plan--I call/talk to any 5 ppl I want unlimited and I have 300 minutes for anyone else. I've had it for about a year and I haven't gone over the 300min mark. On my last bill, I ranked up just over 2500min, so unlimited plans are my favorite.

I like the iPhone but I'm not impressed w/ AT&T; it would have to be $60 w/ at least 1000 min + N/W for me to even consider it. 400 lousy minutes for $60 a month is ludicrous! Yes, it has unlimited internet which costs an addl $20/mo, but I can pay that same amount of money and get the 5 faves plus unlimited internet on the same EDGE-type network.

Mark my words....if this goes through, you're going to hear a lot more "hello? can you hear me?" b/c the cell networks are going to get saturated.

Carrier competition good.

The US, unlike the rest of the world, is a dual network cellular system - both CDMA (Verizon, Sprint - Japan and S. Korea) and GSM (AT&T and T-Mobile, along with the rest of the world). This dual investment in redundant, incompatible infrastructure is what drains the money of the carriers, so that they don't have the money OR time resources to get all the new stuff running.

If we could get Verizon and Sprint to join the rest of the world, then the carriers could compete on features and capabilities. As it is, their primary competitive pitch is coverage - a sorry state of affairs, such as it is.

CDMA may be a more technically capable network, but this is the old beta-VHS debate. GSM may be slightly technically inferior, but the convenience of users swapping SIMs out from phone to phone, and not having to go to the store to re-provision another phone is sweet.