Unless you’ve been under the rock for the past couple of weeks, by now you should have heard about AT&T killing the unlimited data plans for both the iPhone and iPad, then grandfathering in the iPad plans for people who buy theirs before the deadline and finally caving in and allowing a 30 day “grace” window until the deadline. If have been following that news then you most certainly have heard about the release of the iPhone 4.0 on the AT&T network and Apple’s change of tune on mobile advertising as soon as they decide to start their own ad network built in natively into the operating system. The big news obviously is the caps on data, 200MB and 2GB respectively, and how many people are rather irritated because the iPhone is built around connectivity. There has been continuous coverage on podcasts and blogs regarding how the 200MB plan is essentially crap and the 2GB plan is a necessity, but what people are not talking about is Apple is now going to be delivering advertisements to your iPhones and iPads which are going to consume quite a bit of bandwidth that you will now be paying quite a pretty penny for.
Of course one could argue that mobile advertisements have always been on the applications that are available through the App Store, but Apple themselves are toting these media rich advertisements that allow for running video, interactive games and streaming audio which out of all the possible digital mediums consume the most bandwidth. So not only are we now going to have advertisements pushed upon us, but the cheaper bill that AT&T is waving around in our faces will most likely be non-existant if these iAds push us over our bandwidth limit.
Of course Apple neglected to mention this little tidbit in their press conference earlier this week. Even though I am eligible for an upgrade on my account I think I am going to wait to see what happens with this whole bandwidth fiasco that AT&T is pulling, and more off, hoping that Verizon will get an iPhone this time next year coupled with an unlimited data plan that I can actually use in the New York City metro area. Here’s to dreams.
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