AT&T Cracking Down - iPhone 3G Users Currently on Other Plans Be Warned

Last week AT&T created quite a ruckus for altering their ToS, but after the backlash they ultimately decided against it. Well, we may be looking at round 2 here. This time a tipster has told TiPb that iPhone 3G owners in the Atlanta and Austin markets who are not currently provisioned with an iPhone 3G data [...]

Last week AT&T created quite a ruckus for altering their ToS, but after the backlash they ultimately decided against it. Well, we may be looking at round 2 here.

This time a tipster has told TiPb that iPhone 3G owners in the Atlanta and Austin markets who are not currently provisioned with an iPhone 3G data plan will receive an SMS message advising them that an iPhone 3G rate plan will be added to their line of service. These customers will begin receiving SMS messages today and the plans will be provisioned on the evenings of April 8th and 9th. It appears that AT&T just tapped these two cities as a trial run, the rest of the country should start getting similar alerts on April 21st.

So what does all of this mean? There are a few possibilities, depending on your mobile situation:

• If you are using an iPhone 3G and you snuck in one of AT&T’s MediaNET data plans for $15 you will be forced on the $30 iPhone 3G data plan.
• For those of you who share SIM cards between an iPhone and Blackberry while using a Blackberry data plan, well it may be a bit more troublesome. Since your BlackBerry requires a BlackBerry plan to work, you’ll need to make extra-double-sure you don’t get an alert and if you do, you will want to call up AT&T right away and explain that you’re a SIM-swapper and to leave your plan set to your BB plan — which will hopefully continue to work fine on an iPhone.
• Lastly, with a PDA Unlimited data plan, expect minimal damage.  It’s theoretically possible that MMS will not work since the iPhone currently does not support MMS, at least until AT&T flips the switch when iPhone OS 3.0 drops.  So check that.

The upshot is this: if AT&T starts noticing that you’re using an iPhone 3G, they’re going to start enforcing their long-standing policy that you use an iPhone 3G plan. If you’re a regular SIM-swapper, you might be in for some hassles, depending on what your current plan is.

The thing that really rubs TiPb the wrong way is that the BlackBerry, PDA, and iPhone data plans all are $30. Why not allow us to change our devices as we see fit and keep it simple by one data plan to rule them all.  BlackBerry users who try to switch their SIM to another device have long lived with the pain of not having a plan that easily works on non-BB phones.  For now, iPhone plans do work fine on other devices.

So to all of the SIM swappers out there or for those of you who flew under the radar, how are you feeling about this?  Isn’t part the point of having a GSM phone being able to swap the SIM with minimal hassle?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AT&T Cracking Down - iPhone 3G Users Currently on Other Plans Be Warned

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