• Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Wall Street Journal, Friday, June 4, 2010 10:33 AM

AT&T's plan to battle network congestion with a two-tiered, metered payment system for data delivery for new customers is stirring up a backlash, Hugo Miller and Olga Kharif report.

"They're trying to make us use the network less rather than invest in the network," says iPhone user Jeff Jarvis, who writes the BuzzMachine blog and is a professor of journalism at CUNY. "They should be looking at us like crack dealers. Mobile should be the crack and they should be encouraging us."

Consumer Reports senior editor Mike Gikas points out that most people are getting a good deal because of their modest data usage but he says that consumers worry that the company could again change the plan willy-nilly if they're not making enough profit. And developers like Wade Beavers worry that the plan could stymie the use of data-intensive software programs such as mobile television. "Single-handedly, this is a killer for mobile TV," he says.

Spencer E. Ante and Roger Cheng explore developers' reactions more extensively in a piece in the Wall Street Journal. Bart Decrem, CEO of the company that makes the popular Tap Tap games for the iPhone, worries that the move "could dampen people's appetite for downloading apps and engaging with them over the cellular network."

But ABI Research analyst Stuart Carlaw tells Ante and Cheng that AT&T's pricing model will soon be outdated. "There's only one direction you can go with data usage," he says.

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