According to Investor's Business Daily, AT&T will continue its subsidy band wagon for all sorts of devices including netbooks, cameras, portable video games, GPS and anything that eats up data.
"The economics for us are terrific. We're willing to
invest to get a customer," said Glenn Lurie, AT&T's president of
emerging devices. "We're very comfortable with the margins we're going
to receive on these netbooks, in the deals we're talking about."
Currently with AT&T rebates, consumers can buy netbooks from Acer and Dell for $99. AT&T is in talks with other computer makers. They also heavily subsidize iPhones.
The fee for data is $60 a month up to 5 gigabytes and then after that the data charges really add up, especially for video viewing, or research needed by attorneys.
One attorney has started a class action lawsuit because she received a $5000 data bill for a $100 netbook. Then there was the surprised Bears game watcher who received a $28,000 bill for data used while on a cruise ship in port in Florida.