AT&T, often known for their anti-consumer practices and desperate attempts at increasing profit margins, has finally decided to do something decent for once. Although, as Chris Zeigler says, not without a lot of prodding and threats of lawsuits. AT&T has announced that they will begin allowing FaceTime over cellular for anyone with an LTE device that also happens to have a tiered data plan, or mobile share plan.
Long story short, those willing to pay more for a tiered data plan now have the luxury of blazing through that data plan with LTE FaceTime calls:
AT&T today announced it will enable FaceTime over Cellular at no extra charge for iOS 6 customers with an LTE device on any tiered data plan. AT&T will also continue to offer FaceTime over Cellular to customers with any AT&T Mobile Share plan, as well as FaceTime over Wi-Fi, which has always been available for all customers. AT&T expects to roll out this functionality to customers over the next eight to ten weeks.
As part of its commitment to serving customers with disabilities, AT&T is also making FaceTime over Cellular available to deaf and hard of hearing customers who qualify for special text and data-only packages.
Yeah, but here’s the problem. AT&T won’t be rolling it out immediately; instead, the company will begin rolling out the functionality over the next 8 to 10 weeks. Not too shabby for a service that costs them nothing to allow, and that should have been available from the beginning, going back all the way to the moment when FaceTime was announced as a beta for the first time in 2010.
Way to out do yourselves this time, AT&T. Nice of you to throw the richer plebs a bone on this one. So very, very kind of you to finally enter the current world of technology.
