[sethg]

But most AT&T customers are locked into long-term contracts, so they can’t just up and decide “I’ll cut the data plan”.

My startup was recently bought by Nokia, and unsurprisingly, one of the fringe benefits of working for Nokia is getting a free smartphone (GSM 3G) with an unlimited data plan (T-Mobile, thank God). My wife and I looked into cancelling our Verizon family plan and moving to just one line for her, but the early-termination fee is so high that it’s cheaper for me to just keep the Verizon phone. And since our Verizon plan has free in-network calls, it’s also cheaper for me to carry the Verizon phone, so that she can call me on it.

The flip side of this is that people who abandon their carrier because of network issues will be more like a slow leak than a stampede, so AT&T executives with an eye on quarterly profit results would rather do anything but invest heavily in building out their infrastructure.

[Legion]

That doesn't significantly change the issue.

Whether one can cut the bill immediately or in X months time, the point is that the last thing AT&T should want is people saying, "why am I paying $X when I hardly use it?"

They should want to have mobile data usage so ingrained in their customers' lives that people wouldn't dream of cutting it when their contracts run up.

AT&T has sold a lot of data plans by making them required for iPhone purchases, and plenty of people wanted the fancy new toy. What happens when smartphones aren't the fancy new toy? How many AT&T iPhone customers, if they had to drop their iPhone and get another phone, would still buy a data plan if it was simply an option rather than a requirement?