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To whom it may concern:

Over the past two days there has been a lot of talk about your new data plans, par­tic­u­larly the removal of the “unlim­ited” option. While I believe there should be a third tier for the heav­ier users, I can under­stand the rea­sons for mov­ing to an entirely metered struc­ture and do not have any prob­lems with that part. Where I do have a prob­lem is the addi­tional $20 per month charge for users of inter­net tethering.

Before I make my points, let me quote one of your Senior Vice Pres­i­dents, Mark Collins, from his inter­view with GigaOm on the day the new plans were announced.

That capa­bil­ity is enabling some­thing you can’t do today. You can use one device and get mul­ti­ple con­nec­tions so it’s more use­ful to you. You’re going to use more data so the price is based on the value that will be delivered.

This is in response to the ques­tion “What about the $20 teth­er­ing fee? It looks like a con­ve­nience charge.”

That capa­bil­ity is only enabling some­thing you can’t do today because you locked it out in the first place. My AT&T-branded LG CU500 could not tether until I had a teth­er­ing plan, but my unlocked and unbranded Sony K850i could just fine with­out any spe­cial teth­er­ing plans. The Apple iPhone 3G and 3GS both have sup­ported teth­er­ing offi­cially since the release of the 3.0 firmware released nearly a year ago, but this was dis­abled on mod­els sold in the US because you did not want to allow it. Teth­er­ing is not some spe­cial fea­ture you are doing work to enable and deserve to be paid extra for, it’s a fea­ture all of our data-capable phones have built in which you have actively engaged in defeating.

I won’t argue the state­ment that it makes my phone and data plan more use­ful, but again this is a fea­ture that both have inher­ently had from the begin­ning and you have actively sought to remove. If I went to rent a four door sedan and found that the pas­sen­ger side and rear seats had been removed unless I paid an extra fee to have them rein­stalled, I and any other rea­son­able per­son would think that is out­ra­geous. Unfor­tu­nately you are able to take advan­tage of the fact that 99% of your users are not technology-savvy and thus do not know how much they’re being screwed.

The last part of that response is the most illog­i­cal of them all. “You’re going to use more data,” so the price increases with­out the amount of data I’m allowed to use chang­ing in the slight­est? How is me using 2GB in one month on a smart­phone dif­fer­ent from using 2GB in one month teth­er­ing to even a dozen lap­tops? Data is data, one type doesn’t put any extra load on your net­work ver­sus another.

Extra charges for teth­er­ing were accept­able when the alter­na­tive options were smartphone/dumbphone-only unlim­ited pack­ages, since yes, a teth­er­ing user is likely to use more data over­all. How­ever, if I’m already buy­ing a bucket of bits how does it mat­ter at all if I choose to use those to feed my smart­phone directly or down­load some­thing to my laptop?

To close, I have been a cus­tomer of AT&T since port­ing in from T-Mobile’s then ter­ri­ble cov­er­age in 2005. In that time I have at peak car­ried two voice lines, one iPhone data, and one Lap­top­Con­nect at the same time. I know that does not make me any­thing spe­cial, but I’m sure it’s more than most of your sin­gle non-business or fam­ily cus­tomers. I have also defended AT&T as hav­ing the best net­work for geeks due to your use of open GSM tech­nol­ogy and until recently high­est mobile data speeds. As you might guess, I will not be doing this any longer and I will be empha­siz­ing the prob­lems I have with your change to any­one who may ask about your ser­vice. I had been eye­ing the Sprint/HTC Evo 4G for a time while debat­ing mak­ing the switch, I thank you for help­ing me make my deci­sion. You can expect to see my num­ber port out in the near future.

Sin­cerely,
Sean Harlow

Sent via e-mail to Ran­dall Stephen­son, CEO and Mark Collins, VP of Voice and Data