I Call Shenanigans on Phones Using OnLive

If you look at the way ISPs market mobile data plans its clearly skewed towards business users. Who need to access their email, analytics, and administrative panels at any given time. Lets take a look at AT&T’s price scheme for a second. Business users can pay $35 a month for 200MB or $60 a month for 5GB. Smartphone plans start at $35 a month for unlimited usage, and $65 a month for tethering with a 5GB a month data plan. No business is going to pay for their $35 a month for a 200MB plan if you can get an unlimited plan for the same price. Lets be serious they’re only giving cell phone users 200MB of bandwidth for the $35 a month before they start traffic shaping. The use of the word ‘unlimited’ is marketing. Like Coach, Inc. calling their products designer, yet they have over 10,000 employees.

Then just yesterday PC World published this article. AT&T provides Internet ala carte access like AOL did in the 90’s.  I’d hate to compare them to Acai Berry diet programs, but in many ways thats exactly what they are. In my opinion what they’re doing is just a form of a negative bill option payment system. Which is where a company bills you after you trial period is up on their product. Instead of AT&T giving their product away they charge their customers for amounts they know they’re going to exceed, and jack up the prices on overages higher than a credit card company.

When you watch an HD video on Youtube that lasts 10 minutes you’re using about 75MB of bandwidth. Lets just say you have a regular ole $35 a month plan. You can play less than 30 minutes of OnLive on your phone a month, Huzzah! User you minutes wisely. If you play your cards right you can play for 45 seconds every day. If you have the $60 a month data plan you’re talking 11hrs of play time. Which is much better, but you got to remember the phone plans start at $29.99. Plus the cost of your OnLive subscription. So lets see… thats atleast $1,200 a year + the cost of your phone.

AT&T’s network is spotty — thank god the iPhone is WiFi enabled.