AT&T Will Not Charge For FaceTime Over Cellular, On One Condition

It’s confirmed: according to an official statement posted on MacRumors, AT&T will not be charging subscribers extra fees for using the upcoming FaceTime over cellular feature. But, unsurprisingly, there’s a catch: subscribers will have to be on any of AT&T’s Mobile Share plans in order to use said feature at no additional cost. Last month, it was speculated that the American telco was likely to charge monthly fees for using FaceTime over cellular. In response, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson then said that it was “too early” to discuss how AT&T will handle the new service. Set to enable customers to use Apple’s video calling protocol via cellular data transfer as opposed to Wi-Fi only, FaceTime over cellular is expected to debut in iOS 6 this fall. Ahead of that, AT&T has officially stated the following terms:

AT&T will offer FaceTime over Cellular as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans, which were created to meet customers’ growing data needs at a great value. With Mobile Share, the more data you use, the more you save. FaceTime will continue to be available over Wi-Fi for all our customers.

Announced last month and primed to launch on Aug. 23, AT&T’s Mobile Share plans allow subscribers to share data across a number of devices. Verizon offers similar plans called Share Everything plans, which already launched last June 28. But it hasn’t specified whether such a plan or some other prerequisite package is needed for its subscribers to use FaceTime over cellular. For its part, Sprint has categorically said that it will not be charging for FaceTime over cellular. Rather, usage of the feature in question will be part of the subscribers’ existing data plans. AT&T, on the other hand, seems to undermine its subscribers’ existing data plans in favor of its Mobile Share plans, just so FaceTime over cellular can take effect. Are you in favor of AT&T’s FaceTime over cellular limitation? Source: MacRumors

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