AT&T Under Pressure To Cut Price Tag On IPhone's Data Plan

With pricing in the smartphone race heating up, AT&T has been slow to shift gears. The telecommunications giant has stubbornly kept unchanged the pricey data plans required for the Apple iPhone - a chief complaint and impediment for consumers. The decision to hold pat comes as the industry increasingly addresses the downturn in consumer spending with lower priced service plans and phones. AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega said last month that the company was considering a lower tier. Any such plan likely would include limits on how long users could surf the Web or how many programs they can download over the air. But AT&T is reluctant to offer a cheaper plan because it would lose a rich source of revenue used to offset the subsidies it pays Apple to keep the iPhone at the $200 level, as well as the cost of delivering that service. AT&T has to balance the growing number of iPhone users with the amount of traffic they take up in the network.