I spent a long time today lurking on mobile phone bulletin boards and talking to people who work for Cingular. I’ve come to the conclusion that people trying to buy the Treo 650 are getting dramatically different advice about which data plan to subscribe to.
If you don’t talk to anyone, and just buy the Treo 650 from the palmOne On-Line Store, they offer you Cingular Nation and Cingular Regional voice plans with Cingular MEdia Works, a $19.99 unlimited data plan. Meanwhile, some people who try to purchase the Treo 650 directly from Cingular are being told that the MEdia Works plan is not for handsets like the Treo 650 and are being offered an unlimited data plan that costs $44.99, 49.99, or some other price.
These tales are all over the Howard Forums, TreoCentral, and a number of other websites with discussion areas.
I’m not saying that the people I’ve spoken with at Cingular are misleading potential customers, but it sure seems like there are multiple price points for unlimited wireless data based mainly on the amount of data a customer could reasonably be expected to consume. So far I haven’t seen anything in print to indicate that the more expensive unlimited data plans are better or faster than the $19.99 MEdia Works plan. Many Treo 650 users who bought on-line or convinced a Cingular sales person to give them MEdia Works say that their Treo 650 is operating at EDGE network speed.
If I find out anything different, I’ll post the information right away.