iPad users also feel AT&T’s (un)limited data misery; time for DOJ?

Yesterday’s AT&T data caps on new users also apply to new iPad 3G users, who will be limited to choosing between the carrier’s two new strictly limited new data plans along with their iPhone-purchasing brethren. The original AT&T data plans for the iPad 3G, introduced just a few months ago, are going by the wayside in favor of the $15 and $25 a month plans (according to various reports), which our internal math suggests will barely be enough to keep a typical iPhone user going throughout the course of the month, let alone a typical iPad 3G user. However, if there is a silver lining to the seemingly endless stream of ugly news out of AT&T of late, it’s that the carrier may have crossed a line with the new iPad plans, in which consumers are being sold a special, more expensive iPad model for the specific purpose of being able to use it for internet purposes wherever an AT&T 3G signal exists, and then failing to offer a legitimate data plan; “legitimate” being defined as “unlimited” in the case of the iPad, as the device is far closer to that of a computer than an iPhone in terms of functionality, and there is no established precedent in the U.S. for broadband internet usage being capped for computer users. While the iPad 3G can also get onto the internet via wifi in the relatively few places that offer wifi, the iPad 3G model is clearly marketed as being a mobile (use it on the internet anywhere) and not a portable (use it on the internet only at Point A and Point B) device.

While the activities of cellular carriers in the United States have long been sorely unregulated, and those carriers have long offered service which has been embarrassingly inferior to much of the rest of the civilized world without penalty, one has to wonder if the fact that AT&T’s new low with regard to attempting to cripple devices may indeed finally trigger government intervention now that AT&T is attempting to limit the ability of iPad users to gain access to the internet on what any reasonable observer would likely deem to be a de facto laptop computer. With the Department of Justice reportedly sniffing around Apple lately for grossly misguided reasons relating to its innovations in the digital music industry, perhaps today’s news will instead motivate the DOJ to finally address one of the greatest technological embarrassments in the history of the United States, that being the fact that its cellular carriers are allowed to operate without laws and keep its citizens in the relative dark ages. Apple is now the largest technology company in the United States; if even it can’t keep AT&T under control, then perhaps it’s time for the feds take the reins.

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.