AT&T: Industry must reassess mobile data billing models

AT&T has made its best case for its eventual shift from all-you-can eat smartphone data plans to a tiered or usage-based models that more closely align customers data bills to the amount they consume.

Though AT&T gave no timeline on when it would make such a shift or how such plans would be implemented, chief financial officer Rick Lindner said the emergence of new data-focused devices and the growing disparity in the amount of data customers consume will force not just AT&T, but the industry as a whole, to move away toward billing models that are much more equitable to the way individual consumers behave.