AT&T: Metered Data Billing Coming

Although they’re at each other’s throats in TV commercials, there’s one thing AT&T and Verizon Wireless can agree on: Metered billing for data is coming, and it might be here before we know it.

Echoing what Verizon Wireless CTO Dick Lynch said earlier this year, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told a gathering in San Francisco this week that the industry is moving toward “variable pricing.”

Most smartphone users aren’t too keen on the idea, but Stephenson told the crowd that “heavy consumers will pay different than the lower consumers,” according to DailyTech. Of course, that statement is somewhat vague and probably doesn’t ease the mind of the casual Web surfer who thinks they’ll be shelling out more for data.

In January, Lynch also stressed that bandwidth hogs would be the ones most impacted by the pending changes. He told the Washington Post that it’s simply not fair that these types of users are paying the same as the average user. He said the current model “isn’t long-term sustainable.”