By AT&T and Verizon are the first carriers to consider shared family data plans. And while we have already seen evidence of Verizon getting things ready for the big changes, we hadn’t seen anything from AT&T, until now. Engadget has just gotten a hold of a leaked document screenshot, which displays AT&T’s systems being prepared for shared data plans.
Not much is known yet, and the document states that such feature is yet to be determined. The presence of shared data plans in Telegance could simply mean that Ma Bell is simply testing things out. Regardless, this is exciting to see, and we should hope that these shared data plans will be available sooner than later.
Shared family data plans will allow customers to use their data in multiple devices. This would make it much easier for users to acquire not only more smartphones, but WiFi hotspot devices, data connected computers and tablets. The main concern when picking a new 3G/4G device is the addition of a whole data plan fee to the monthly bill.
Let’s see who gets these plans ready faster. Stay tuned for more details, and give us your intake. Would you be more willing to purchase other internet connected devices if you could share your data among them.
[Via: Engadget]
Sounds legit, I’ll just go ahead and email you my private information, k?
No! Me first!
Back on topic, I’m really glad this is happening. Hopefully my family will get a basic data plan; right now I just use wifi, but for the once in a while I need to google something while I’m not at work/home it would be nice.
Likely to only be beneficial to a tiny percentage of customers, but it won’t stop AT&T from boasting that they’re making data more affordable.
This will be beneficial to any household with more than one mobile device. 2 smartphones and a 3G tablet would no longer need 3 separate data packages. I’ll take shared 3 gigs for $40 rather than 3x $25 for 2 gigs each.
Your evidence is?
You seem to know a lot about a potentially huge untapped market of families who only need a tiny bit of data per person. Say like, oh mine!
But yes, power users will continue to whine that they can’t have unlimited data subsidized by everyone else.
I’d buy into it. If my wife and I could get a 3gb per month plan for $30 it would be great. If Verizon offers a better plan on shared data I would think about switching. Knowing my luck though, as soon as I did att would start getting all of the great devices and Verizon would get almost nothing as far as great Android devices like att has for the most part.
I must admit that being on att is great for importing gsm devices that won’t work on Verizon’s or sprints network.
Your kidding yourself if you think AT&T or Verizon are going to make it substancly cheaper for family, they’ll probably start the plans at say 50 dollars for 5GB, claiming that 3GB for a family plan is too low, and I’m sure the real point of family plans is all of the nice overage bills you’ll get as it’s much harder to keep an eye on 2 – 5 devices data usage rather than 1
Though admittedly it will probably be more of a problem for families with kids than just a couple sharing a data plan.
I think a family shared plan would would well for more data intensive families. Currently, out of my 5 member family, we pay approximately $115 a month for data. My brother and I are on unlimited, my sister on the 2 gig plan, and my parents on the 200 MB.
Our total data usage for that month was around 4.8 gigs. It seems like we are being over charged. So, there could be some use for it, as long as there isn’t some BS $10 charge per line to share data. I think as high as $5 per line would be workable though. I personally would prefer it to not be a per line charge.
I suspect my family could benefit from this, currently we are on TMO and have 3 smartphones, 2 have “unlimited” (theoretically throttled at 5GB) and 1 200Mb plan. Right now even with our (decent IMO) plans we are paying $25, $20 and $15 for the 3 data plans.
Lets say that we are talking about $50 for 5GB we have never used anywhere close to that (we haven’t gone over 1GB _combined_ in at least the last 6 months) we could potentially save $15/mo, of course if they charge a monthly add a line fee on top of that those savings could go away pretty quickly.