Simple math says AT&T’s iPhone data plans are price hike for majority

After three years of a mandatory unlimited AT&T data plan with my iPhone, the carrier is now offering two limited data plans: two hundred megabytes a month for $15, and two gigabytes a month for $25. Having never once checked my data consumption on my various iPhone models in all the years I’ve been using them, I decided to take a look where my typical data usage might place me among the new plans – and after less than a day, the results are startling and yet not surprising. Twenty-one hours ago I reset the usage statistics on my iPhone, and since then I’ve used 8.8 megabytes of data. It’s not surprising that the number is so low, as I’ve done almost literally nothing with my iPhone in the past twenty-one hours. I posted one tweet using Twitter for iPhone (no attachments), checked my email once, never sent any emails, never even opened Safari, and never opened Facebook or any other app which might include data usage.

The math says that my 8.8 megabytes of usage in twenty-one hours would work out to about 10 megabytes over a twenty-four hour period, which over a thirty-one day month is represents 310 megabytes of data usage. That’s right, despite the fact that I almost literally did nothing with my iPhone during the timespan I used as a data sample, that near total lack of activity put me on a pace to blow right through AT&T’s $15 a month plan – by more than fifty percent, no less – which would see me hit with an additional $15 surcharge, placing me back to my current $30 a month data costs.

That’s assuming, of course, that my iPhone never leaves my pocket.

How can that be the case? Of the two email accounts I have on my iPhone, one is set to instantly update via push, and the other is set to update itself manually every fifteen minutes. In this line of work I certainly receive more email than some users (I get frequent press releases and such), but I’m just as certain that I receive less email than others. So on the basis of simply having email on my iPhone at all, I’m already well past AT&T’s entry level data plan – and that odds are that you are as well.

Now let’s apply a real world scenario to my data usage. During a typical day I’ll send several emails from my iPhone, tweet at least a few times, and hit up a random number of websites in Safari, along with looking at the weather report once or twice and maybe firing up the Facebook app. In other words, my typical day as an iPhone data user is roughly typical of the overall iPhone userbase. If the mere receipt of email alone puts me at about 300 MB of data usage per month, then just how high will all my data usage push me? Would I be able to skate by on the two gigabyte, $25 a month plan? As a test, one minute of websurfing (which consisted of loading three websites but not tapping through to any of the articles) racked up about three megabytes of data usage. Multiply that out to even ten minutes of mobile websurfing a day, across thirty-one days, and that’s more than nine hundred additional megabytes of data per month, putting the total at more than 1.2 gigabytes per month for just light websurfing and receiving email. Factor in the emails you send each month, your mobile Twitter and Facebook usage (plus some mobile photos uploaded to each), along with about 100 megabytes for each album’s worth of music you download from mobile iTunes each month, and my math says that even a fairly light iPhone data user has as good a chance as not of exceeding the limits of AT&T’s $25 a month data plan; those who spend more than ten to fifteen minutes per day using network-based apps on their iPhone will have more than a fifty percent chance of going over.

Any user who does their own daily measurements and then extrapolates across an entire month is going to see slightly different numbers than what I came up with one way or the other. But looking at my math, from where I’m seeing it, AT&T’s new $15 a month limited data plan will literally not work for anyone who has email on their iPhone and has it set to check on any kind of regular basis, and even the $25 a month limited plan won’t work for half or more of all moderate data users. In other words, while AT&T is trumpeting the move as a price decrease for most users, my math says this is a prince increase for the majority of new iPhone users going forward (fortunately, those of us who already have an iPhone can stick with the $30 a month unlimited plan apparently forever). Frankly, I’d like to see AT&T’s supposed math, which laughably claims that 98% of users won’t exceed the $25 a month plan, laid out in as much detail as mine.