Side Note: I have returned from my blogging abyss. I have been busy, we just moved, and haven’t had much time to blog. But I am getting back to it.

AT&T announced last week that they are changing their data plans. A key part of this is that they finally enable tethering for US iPhone users, for $20 a month.

I was as excited as anyone about tethering when it was announced last year at WWDC. I was definitely one of those people who seemed to recall AT&T saying it would be coming by the end of last year, but apparently they claim to have never said that. My in-laws don’t have broadband, so when I am there my only internet access is my iPhone. I have thought about getting a MiFi or something similar countless times but decided it ultimately wasn’t worth the investment. I always assumed tethering would be pricey (somewhere in the $30-$60 range) but always assumed that it would include more data and hopefully be something you could turn on and off at will.

The sad part is that in order to get tethering you must switch to one of the new plans, most like the DataPro which does drop in price from $30 to $25, but also drops the data cap from 5 GB to 2 GB. In order to add tethering an additional $20 fee must be incurred. This means it will cost $55 a month for 2 GB of share data. It is completely inexcusable that AT&T would change users for a feature to be enabled on their account. The data cap stays at 2GB even with tethering, so you are literally paying $20 for them flip a switch.

I also don’t think 2 GB is enough for a shared tethering plan. 2 GB won’t go very far on a laptop and I use between 500 MB and 1 GB on my phone alone. If there is one blessing, it’s that each additional GB will only cost $10. So for example, if you have the current iPhone 5 GB plan and a Verizon MiFi, you are basically paying $90 for 5 GB of phone and 5 GB of laptop data. $90 on the new AT&T plan gets you 6 GB of shared data for $85. If you assume that you can get by with 1 GB of data on your phone (and most people can) you get the same 5 GB on your laptop for $5 less. As much as I hate AT&T for what they are doing, this isn’t a bad deal.

Part of me wants to boycott this just because it’s so ridiculous that they would charge you $20 more without giving you any extra data. Part of me wants to jailbreak just so that I can use my data without the $20 fee. But honestly, if they allow you to add it and remove it as needed I could see myself taking advantage of it the few times a year I need it. I realize that if people still pay for it AT&T will have no reason to change it, but when you look at the big picture, it’s not a horrible deal.