AT&T adds overseas data plans for iPhone users

Computerworld - AT&T Inc. last week began offering two new international data plans for iPhones in an effort to soften the blow on users who can rack up hundreds of dollars in overseas roaming charges per month.

But the new data plans are expensive in their own right. One costs $119.99 per month for 100MB of data use, while the other has a monthly fee of $199 for up to 200MB of data. That's in addition to the price of AT&T's plans for iPhone use within the U.S., although the carrier said that the international plans don't require a long-term commitment and can be activated for periods as short as one month.

Gartner Inc. analyst Ken Dulaney predicted that the international plans will appeal to a "rarified set of users" who are willing to pay a very steep price. But, he added, "it does save a lot of money for roamers who often come back with [even costlier] bills when they don't have such a plan."

On the other hand, an IT manager at a U.S.-based global manufacturing company said that AT&T's new plans aren't a serious offering for large businesses with many workers who travel abroad.

The IT manager, who asked not to be identified, said his company has banned corporate purchases of Apple Inc.'s new iPhone 3G because of the "psycho-expensive" international data-roaming charges incurred by employees using first-generation iPhones.

For example, one executive spent three days in Canada and was assessed an $800 roaming fee, the IT manager said. He added that another exec spent two weeks in Italy and was charged $5,000 for roaming.

One issue is that the iPhone "uses 10 times the data as any other device," said the IT manager, whose company has 4,000 BlackBerry devices that are used primarily for e-mail.

Overseas data-roaming costs have been a subject of active discussion on Apple's iPhone online forum. And as part of last week's announcement, AT&T noted that 2MB of data use -- roughly the size of a two-minute song download -- would cost nearly $40 at a pay-per-use rate of just under 2 cents per kilobyte from a carrier abroad.

The two international data plans cover usage in 67 countries, AT&T said.

This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld's print edition.