Anyone know if they are going to move this to pre-existing or unlocked phones that we buy ourselves? If they do that, I too may have to switch to a standalone PDA.
This would be frustrating, as I have loved the converged device.
This data plan business doesn't account for users like me who want the PDA functions, but don't need the up-to-the-minute contact that power users need.

Umm up till now? I bought my AT&T Tilt in February and in order to get the subsidized price I had to agree to 2 years of $30/mo data plan for my smart phone. My wifes Pantech that we got from them a couple months back did to.

Buy a phone off ebay & pop in your sim card. I might pay $20 for a data plan but $40 for 3 phones is a little excessive. They should have family share data plans.

As I've said more than once, I'd love a family data plan, too. However, there's one problem -- how do you handle "overages"?

With phone family plans, you're usually sharing a limited pool of minutes. If your family exceeds that pool, you get charged per minute overages. I'm not aware of any true unlimited family plans from the major carriers (although MetroPCS might have one).

So how would you do a family data plan? I have an "unlimited" data plan. I certainly wouldn't want to downgrade to a shared pool of megabytes unless it was really big (5 GB or more). (I chose that number because it's what some carriers use as their limit for the "unlimited" plans.) I also don't want to pay $30 per person for data.

If the carrier offered a deal where you could share your data plan for $10 per line or device, I'd seriously consider it, though.

Steve

Yeah I was at T-Mobile store looking at the TP2 and was sooo tempted, ya know to buy it, but when the salesman said I (Had) to have the data package to go with the phone as part of the deal.... I said yeah? that doesn't make any sense when the damn phone has WiFi if I want to go online. It would though make sense for a non WiFi smart phone to require the data package...
so my conclusion at this point is this is just another way for the company's to suck a little more
$$$ from us consumers.

This doesn't surprise me at all. AT&T already gives its Blackberry users the shaft by forcing them into expensive Blackberry-exclusive plans so apparently there's no end to their madness. I'm a data usage geek but the people who aren't should have a choice.

Oh no they didn't!
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I don't know why I'm complaining. I use data on my smartphone anyway.

Verizon started doing this, and I switched to a separate Pocket PC and a regular phone when I renewed my contract. I find wireless connectivity is all that I need. I now have a Verizon LG VX8300 for my phone and an AT&T Tilt for my Pocket PC. I had planned on switching to AT&T as soon as my Verizon contract expired. I guess I'll be staying with Verizon and carrying two devices. The LG VX8300 works great as a phone and the coverage in my area is better with Verizon.

The data plan needs to be much cheaper, before I would ever consider getting it.

Is this only for the subsidized price? I would hope paying full price would allow you to pick the plan that you wanted.

However, maybe AT&T found out that people who didn't have data plans complained of high "surprise" bills because they used data without having a plan. Who knows?

As for Verizon, I believe they also require data plans with smart phones now, at least to get the subsidized price. In fact, I just tried to "purchase" a Samsung Saga online at full price and they required me to select a PDA/Smartphone plan. Maybe the retail stores would be more forgiving, but it looks like Verizon isn't any better than AT&T.

Steve