AT&T's Cheaper Smartphone Plan

AT&T (T - Analyst Report) has announced a cheaper, but limited, data plan for $40 a month. Smartphones need a high speed data link to browse the web, and such plans vary in price from carrier to carier. An unlimited plan from AT&T costs $70 for the Apple (AAPL - Analyst Report) iPhone, and the new plan (currently being tested in a few markets) would offer 400 megabytes of data downloads. This is not very much in terms of time -- about 4 hours a day.

Cheaper plans would impact Sprint's (S - Analyst Report) decision to offer data plans for the Pre, which is due to be released on June 6, 2009.