A visualization of my relationship with AT&T

I got my phone bill a couple of days ago. I’ve known since I first took the time to read the text message AT&T sent me concerning data roaming charges outside of the USA. That was after about a week of casual but cautious Internet use. I had reason to be cautious, I had heard that friends who’s iphones were purchased in the UK (tied to O2) were paying a whole £3 per megabyte of data downloaded outside of the country. I assumed that America’s iphone distributor, AT&T would have similarly outrageous prices.

How naïve I was.

As it turns out, and as I should have read much more closely, AT&T extorts you for 1.95 cent per kilobyte of transfer. KILOBYTE. There are 1024 of those in a megabyte. Google tells me that 1024 * 0.0195 = 19.96800. I was paying almost $20 per megabyte of data transfer. As of this moment that apparently equates to £13.36.

AT&T extorts you for 4.45 times as much as its British counterpart for data transfer abroad. And let’s not even bother rehashing the swindle that is American text rates.

My phone bill for the month is $258.46 of which $136.65 corresponds to my approximately 5.5 megabytes of total transfer. With the cost of a week’s cautious emailing and twittering so high, I can safely conclude that the Internet is indeed serious business.