What Do At&t's New Bandwidth Caps Mean for 'iTunes in the Cloud?'

What Do At&t’s New Bandwidth Caps Mean for ‘iTunes in the Cloud?’

Posted on 02. Jun, 2010 by refe in NEWS

At&t caps bandwidth for iPhone and iPad users.

Apple and At&t are like the couple where the beautiful girl hooks up with the creepy, overweight older guy. Sure he makes a decent sugar daddy, but none of the girl’s friends can quite understand how she can still stomach the guy all these years later.

In yet another move that has put their customers in an uproar, At&t introduced a new pricing scheme that caps bandwidth on 3G data plans at 2 GB per month.

One of the biggest draws of the 3G iPad models introduces last month was the $29.99 no-contract, unlimited data plan that came with it. $30/mo. is nothing to sneeze at, but that unlimited piece was important to costumers because it meant that they didn’t have to worry about metering their use of the device.

Already many potential iPad customers have voiced their disappointment and have indicated that this news may ultimately change their mind about purchasing the device. ‘Data plans’ is currently a trending topic on Twitter.

Capped bandwidth and Apple’s move to the cloud are a contradiction

What concerns me, however, is what this might mean for Apple’s alleged ‘iTunes in the Cloud’ platform that they may or may not be announcing at their World Wide Developers Conference on June 7th.

I was a big fan of music service Lala.com (RIP) which Apple shut down on May 31st. When Apple initially purchased Lala, I had high hopes that they would absorb the platform’s best features – including their flagship cloud-based music catalogue – into iTunes.

At&t’s ill-timed announcement isn’t likely to have any effect on Apple’s plans – although I imagine they have known of At&t’s plans for quite some time. It may, however, have an effect on how viable a cloud based ownership or music streaming service will be under a bandwidth cap.

I don’t want to make the situation sound more dire than it really is – 2 GB of data per month is a healthy allotment. Right now 98% of iPhone users fall within the cap. I haven’t been able to find any good iPad data, simply because the device is so new.

But if users are treating their iPads as laptop replacements and relying on At&t’s 3G network to support that type of usage, they may run into some trouble under the new restricted plans. Especially if they plan on streaming their music, or keeping their collection in the cloud. Continuous music streaming takes a significant toll on bandwidth.

The timing here really is baffling. As Apple likely prepares to launch a new cloud-based or streaming music service and a new iPhone in less than a week, their sole network provider introduces unpopular new restricted data plans.

Just another reason for the world to hold out hope that Apple will eventually dump At&t.

Read the full At&t press release here.

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