PhoneTalk

Before we talk about AT&T's new plans, let’s discuss unlimited data plans across most carriers and the fact that unlimited data isn’t exactly unlimited. These days when you’re talking about an unlimited data plan, you’re typically getting 5GB of data a month and for most people that’s a lot. If you went past the 5GB of data occasionally you probably got a slide from the carrier. Thus it “feels” like unlimited. Is it unlimited? No. Was it ever truly unlimited? Yes, for a hot sec, but that all changed within the last 2 years. (Note: As far as we can tell, the only truly unlimited plan still available is Sprint’s 4G network. It costs extra and it isn’t everywhere.) Nothing is changing for customers with other carriers as of this writing.

What’s happening now for new AT&T customers and existing customers with AT&T Quick Messaging Phone plans will have a more affordable way to get data service with AT&T. While existing smartphone AT&T users can keep the existing $29.99 unlimited data plan with their existing smartphone and roll that data plan over to a new smartphone, as well. The company says that 98% of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 2GB of data a month on average and as such, the company has eliminated the existing 5GB data plan in favor of two plans: DataPlus and DataPro. All this really means is that you're going to have to choose a data plan with a hard cap. So you might start to miss that "unlimited-feeling" data plan from AT&T. Maybe all this is good news to you and you'll start to save some dough.

• DataPlus for an extra $15 a month. You get 200MB of data, which is just fine if you get e-mail and don't download a lot of attachments, occasionally view the web, watch a couple of YouTube videos, and share 50 pictures with social networking sites. Might not sound like you can do a lot for $15 a month, but AT&T says 65% percent of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 200MB of data per month on average.

• DataPro Plan costs an extra $25 a month. You get 2GB of data, which is fine to send/receive e-mails with attachments, view tons of web sites, watch 200 minutes of streaming video (Think: 3 hours of TV), and post up to 500 pictures to social media sites. Exceed 2GBs of data and you'll pay an extra $10 for another 1GB of data. This means if you were one of the 2% of AT&T customers using up to 5GBs of data a month your monthly data plan will go from about $30 a month to $55 a month. The good news is that if you plan to tether your smartphone (yes, even iPhone) to your computer and use it as a modem and have a DataPro plan it will cost an additional $20 a month instead of $30 a month, which is the current cost for this service.

How do you pick a new plan? Look at your cell phone bills from the past couple of months and see on average how much data you use. If it’s less than 200MB of data a month, then you’ll be saving $15 a month on your bill. If you use closer to 2GB of data a month, you’ll be saving $5 on your bill. If, on the other hand, you're one of the 2% who routinely use more than 2GBs of data month, your bill is probably going to go up. Where all this gets tricky is if you use an AT&T smartphone for tethering to computer. That’s when data usage can go up quickly and you might not even realize it. That said, before you change anything on your plans check out your bills over the next couple of months and see how it goes.

Topics: In The Know AT&T Wireless Cell phone plans Smart phones Apple