[imechura]

The same thing happened to my company with AT&T back in 2006. We where sending our sales team to London and Paris to meet with our banking customers and they where running up data usage bills up to 25k per month per phone.

Unfortunately, there was no way out of it other than to pay, up and educate the staff on the costs associated with travel and data usage. The end result was that our teams would turn data features off when traveling abroad and use land lines to call as much as possible.

If your dad is retiring and owns his home then he may just decide to not pay it and let them report it to his credit.

If he is still going to rely on credit then he needs to setup a payment plan and ask them to forgive part of the bill. However, my experience with ATT is that there is no chance of that happening. You will be lucky if you can speak with a rep who even knows what a phone is.