Is a service that recommends what mobile carrier and plan an individual or family should get a good business idea?

In my opinion; no. There aren’t that many carriers available in most areas and the plan selection is also fairly limited. The lack of complications and factors to consider when choosing a mobile carrier makes a service to compare them completely needless. People also don’t want to take the time to enter information into a service just to get a recommended service provider. People can do this all by themselves as it has become so easy these days. They just go online and see which carrier has the cheapest plans, the phones they want, and which carrier most of their friends are on. Most people don’t even have to see if the service provider has coverage in their area nowadays because carriers have improved their coverage so much. People can make the decision about what service provider by themselves, especially nowadays when everything is online. I just don’t think that many people would take the time to input information in a service to decide which mobile carrier they need. Also, there wouldn’t be many ways to make money from the service apart from if you actually sold the cell phone service or with advertising, as not many people would pay for this kind of service.

Virgin Mobile Introducing New Prepaid Mobile Broadband Plans, Extremely Cheap

Virgin Mobile has announced that they will soon be releasing some new prepaid mobile broadband plans, and they are extremely cheap. Virgin Mobile will be canceling most of their current prepaid mobile broadband plans including their $20, $40, and $60 plans. The only plan that they will be keeping is their $10 100 MB plan, which expires after 10 days of payment. Virgin Mobile will be adding a $40 per month unlimited data plan, which is probably the cheapest mobile broadband plan you can find these days. This plan can be used with Virgin Mobile new MiFi or their USB adapter, both of which offer pretty good 3G speeds. AT&T's announcement that unlimited data plans would soon be extinct seems to wrong, at least in the case of most cell phone companies. Anyway Virgin Mobile's new mobile broadband plans are great.

A Dissatisfied Customer Emails AT&T's CEO, And is Threatened With Legal Action, AT&T Later Apologizes

Steve Jobs may accept and even sometimes reply to emails sent by customers, but AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, certainly doesn’t seem to like it. Giorgio Galante decided to email Randall. He sent him two emails, the first being about iPhone eligibility dates and tethering, and the second about the recent data plan changes and how Giorgio had decided to switch to Sprint, but Randall didn’t take it so well. Someone by the name of Brent contacted Giorgio and told him that they appreciate his feedback, but if he continues to email AT&T’s CEO legal action will be taken. After pretty much all of the technology blogs on the internet wrote about this little scandal, AT&T decided to apologize to Giorgio. This is what they said:

“We are apologizing to our customer. We're working with him today to address his questions and concerns. This is not the way we want to treat customers. From Facebook to significant customer service channels, AT&T strives to provide our customers with easy ways to have their questions addressed. Because of this incident, we are reviewing our entire process to ensure a situation like this does not happen again.”

And in response to this, Giorgio said that he accepts their apology, but he will still be switching over to Sprint, and the Evo 4G. It also turns out that Giorgio sent Steve Jobs the same emails, and actually got a reply. Maybe next time something like this happens AT&T’s CEO might want to use some of his 2 GB of data and write a reply to a customer.

AT&T Kills Unlimited Data, Expects Other Carriers to Follow

AT&T has announced some major changes to their data plans. They are basically killing all unlimited data plans, and replacing them with 2 GB and 200 MB plans. Personally I think that this is a very bad change to make and I don’t think that their customers will like it either. Pretty much the only good thing about this change is that cheaper data options for people who cannot afford the now retired $30 a month unlimited data plan will now be available. The new data plans will be called DataPlus and DataPro. DataPlus gives you 200 MB of data for $15 a month, and if you go over your 200 MB per month cap you pay $15 for an extra 200 MB. DataPro gets you 2 GB of data for $25 a month, but unlike DataPlus, on DataPro you pay $10 for each extra GB. AT&T will also allow you to switch between the two data plans easily, so that if you see that you are approaching your monthly limit or you will be using a lot of data, you can easily switch to another plan. This switch will also be affecting iPad data plans. The unlimited iPads data plan will be replaced with DataPro and DataPlus will also be available. A good thing that AT&T is also doing with this change is allowing tethering from your phone to your computer. Tethering will cost you an extra $20 per month, and will be available only with the DataPro plan. Tethering will share your phone’s 2 GB of Data with your computer. This is great for light users but heavy users will be affected. All this started on June 7, but iPhone tethering will be released with the launch of iOS 4. Another good thing that will come out of this is that the load on AT&T’s network will be greatly decreased. In my opinion this is a bad decision on AT&T’s part, but they think that a lot of other carriers will soon follow. The only reason that you could have kept your unlimited data is by having it before June 7, and I am happy for those of you who did. Good luck to the rest of you.

AT&T Agrees to Unlock All Phones

AT&T has now agreed to unlock all of the phones that they offer at absolutely no cost, all except for the iPhone. Most other GSM carriers already offer this so AT&T should probably have been offering it a long time ago, but it is a welcome addition. And the fact that they will not unlock the iPhone was expected, obviously. They will unlock all prepaid phones instantly if you can provide proof of purchase, and all post paid phones if you have at least 90 days of active service. One exception is for phones which AT&T has an exclusivity agreement for. For those phones you will have to wait for at least 10 months since the phone was released.

Palm Pre Officially Available on Top 3 US Carriers, Now on AT&T

The Palm Pre is now available on all 3 major US cell phone carriers, which is a first for any cell phone. First it was on Sprint, then on Verizon, and now on AT&T. You might wonder if it is going to be released on T-Mobile, but that is probably very unlikely. The Palm phones are also available in several other countries around the globe. The Palm Pre Plus was officially released on AT&T's network, as of today. There was absolutely no advertising on their website or at stores, which was an unexpected move on AT&T's part. There was also no pre-ordering. The Palm Pre Plus is now available at AT&T's online store for $150 with a 2 year contract and a $30 a month data package. You can also get free over-night shipping. The Palm Pixi Plus is not available, and will most likely not be available on AT&T any time soon. If you are an AT&T customer and are craving a Palm Pre Plus, then I suggest heading to your nearest AT&T store now or ordering online.

Update

I finally found the official webOS page on AT&T's website. It was actually pretty hard to find. It also informed me that the Palm Pixi Plus will also be launching on AT&T on June 6 of this year. There is no word on pricing yet but I am assuming that it will be pretty closely priced to the Palm Pre Plus.