The bad news: AT&T is going to mandate that all smartphone users have actual, honest-to-goodness data plans starting Sept. 6. Buy a smartphone from AT&T after that date and you'll have to shell out some more money for data services. [via BGR]
The good news: If you currently have a smartphone and but still have one of the old MediaNet plans, you'll be grandfathered in and keep your old plan.
The even better news: This is GSM, people! Unless you're just dying to buy a phone subsidized from AT&T, all you have to do is buy one somewhere else and slap in your SIM card.
That said, this would be much easier to swallow if we weren't still seeing headlines about certain data-heavy apps being disallowed on AT&T's 3G network. (And remember, we're not just talking iPhone here. ToS is ToS.) If any carrier wanted to charge me, say, $100 a month to serve up the mythical dumb pipe, I'd glady pay it.
That's it for me. Get your rant on in the comments.
