AT&T and iPhone – Your world delivered… for $20 per web page.
Courtesy Adam Aronson
So here again we have an example of AT&T sucking the positive energy out of the otherwise revolutionary and exciting iPhone experience. More and more, AT&T seems to be the clumsy, dottering older sibling in the Apple/AT&T relationship.
Adam Aronson, owner of San Francisco-based Arc Design, was floored (literally) when he opened his latest AT&T wireless bill. After spending two weeks in the UK and taking along his iPhone, Adam returned to a special gift from AT&T in the form of a $5000 phone bill, mostly data roaming charges. He did the math and figures that his web surfing worked out to the low-low rate of $20 per web page (two cents per kilobyte).
How can AT&T justify this? Do they have some superfast, 25th century wireless fat pipe in the UK that, for those willing to pay, provides blazingly fast connections? No — it’s the same slow EDGE network we enjoy here in the USA.
[Update - Aug 30, 2007]
I heard from today Adam that after turning down several offers from AT&T to reduce the bill, he finally threatened to file a formal complaint with the FSS and BBB. AT&T responded by removing all of the data roaming charges from his bill.
