To complement a new pair of netbooks, AT&T is making its basic mobile broadband subscription a little bit cheaper.
For 200 MB of data per month, AT&T will now charge $35 instead of $40. A 5 GB plan will still cost $60 per month.
Along with the announcement, AT&T introduced a pair of netbooks from Samsung and Acer. Both the Samsung Go and the Acer Aspire One have been available for some time, so presumably they're relaunching with 3G connectivity built in. Each come with AT&T's communication manager, which automatically connects the user to AT&T wireless hot spots (of which there are 20,000 in the United States) and helps manage Internet connections.
In terms of specs, both netbooks are fairly standard for their class. They've got Intel Atom processors, 10-inch screens, 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drives, "high definition audio" and built-in Web cameras. The Samsung Go has "simple data-sharing connectivity tools," while the Acer Aspire One has a video conferencing feature. They run on Windows 7 and cost $199 after an online rebate and two-year service contract. Both netbooks usually cost around $350 when purchased without broadband service through other retailers.
I'd be more excited for this news if AT&T was either reducing the price of its 5 GB plan or upgrading the capacity of its low-tier plan. A report from OptimizationWeek says the average Web page size is 130 KB, which with some rough math equates to a little more than 1,500 pages per month with AT&T's basic plan. But that's not including any songs you download (at a few MB each) or videos you watch (one estimate says the average YouTube video is 63 MB, which means you couldn't get away with more than a few per month).
Now, such high-bandwidth activities might not be intended for AT&T's bottom-tier plan, but even at $35 per month, they ought to be.
