When I think of Sprint, I usually think of it as the ‘friendliest’ carrier in the US: it currently has the cheapest plans, and those cheap plans also offer unlimited everything – including data. So when AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spilled the beans that his company may charge for FaceTime over its cellular network, Sprint came back a day later to save face and announce that it won’t.
The CDMA carrier’s announcement came by way of a statement that a company spokesperson made to The Wall Street Journal:
“We are committed to our unlimited data and that means not charging for data consumption based on the application.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Sprint’s stance on FaceTime. It’s just another application that uses data – which a carrier already charges its customers for – so there is no need for an additional charge on top of what customers are already paying. AT&T may not see it that way, but then again, it is AT&T.
Verizon, C Spire, Virgin Mobile, and other smaller carriers offer the iPhone, too, but they haven’t made their own statements on FaceTime access and the possible charges that it may bring; however, we’ll learn about them soon enough: iOS 6, the first version of iOS that makes FaceTime access over a cellular network possible, will be released sometime this fall.
You say “I agree wholeheartedly with Sprint’s stance on FaceTime. It’s just another application that uses data – which a carrier already charges its customers for – so there is no need for an additional charge on top of what customers are already paying.”
Now substitute “wireless tethering” for “FaceTime” and try again.
I guess the rebuttal is that tethering is assumed to be sharing data usage with others, ie you only paid for one person’s worth of bandwidth but you and your friends are using more than one person’s worth.
Still, the argument could be made either way – we are already paying for all you can eat. Extra a la carte charges are wrong.
To be fair, Sprint also has one of the most lenient stances on tethering… Whereas AT&T has sent threatening text messages to people about their unauthorized tethering use even when they were on unlimited plans etc.
Sprint’s roaming department has been reported to call people up and tell them to stop it or leave the network
Sprint won’t charge a dime for using Face time on their network, and you know why because it would be a feat to use Skype voice on their network, video call on Face time is simply not going to work, period. I’m seriously considering roaming on Verizon’s towers so they’d kick me off, but do they still charge ETF in that case?