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How Apple’s positioned to offer cheap data at home and abroad
My mother just left for a week-long trip to Europe. Before she went I set up her phone on AT&T’s international data plan, reminding me once again just how outrageous international data charges are. On AT&T, $30 gets you a pool of 120MB of data for international use. At home, $50 gets you 5GB. Hardly proportional.
In large part, we have the wireless carriers to thank for this: because of the prevalence of locked phones–which not only prevents customers from easily switching carriers domestically, but also from using local SIM cards in the countries they travel to–the telecom companies have long had a pretty tight grip on how customers can access the Internet while abroad.
But in an interview with the UK’s EveningStandard earlier this month, Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue–ostensibly there to talk about music–let drop an interesting tidbit.