AT&T currently charges customers extra for ‘Personal Hotspot’, a service that allows users to create a Wireless Hotspot on their iOS device allowing them to connect their iPad, Mac or other Wi-Fi ready devices to the web from their iPhone’s connection. And while I think it’s a little ridiculous for AT&T to charge extra for mobile hotspot on tiered data plans, they do it anyway and it’s something we’ll have to live with. However, it was recently discovered that AT&T may begin charging customers for another service on iOS: FaceTime.
9to5mac reports that when attempting to enable FaceTime over cellular on an AT&T iPhone they were told to call AT&T to activate the feature. If you’re unaware, that’s the same message one receives when attempting to activate Personal Hotspot on an unsupported data plan. 9to5mac claimed to have tested FaceTime over cellular on a Verizon iPad and said it worked flawlessly. When 9to5mac reached out to AT&T for a comment on the issue, a spokesperson provided them with this statement:
We’re working closely with Apple on the new developer build of iOS6 and we’ll share more information with our customers as it becomes available.
To me, this is unacceptable. If I’m paying for 3GB of data, why should I be told how to use it? It really doesn’t make sense to me. So if you’re on AT&T, what do you think of them possibly charging extra for FaceTime over cellular? Does this make you want to switch to another American carrier like Sprint or Verizon? Let us know in the comments.
