Doing The Math

With the iPad, AT&T offers 250 MB of data a month for $15 a month (technically, $14.99, which is odd since every other deal is a round number). With the Kindle Fire HD, AT&T offers 250 MB of data for $50 a year. So that’s $180 a year versus $50 a year for the same data on the two different devices.

Perhaps not coincidentally, when you factor out the storage markup, Amazon is charging users $130 to upgrade to the Kindle Fire HD with 4G/LTE.

So it’s possible that Amazon is passing the entire $130 from consumers over to AT&T to secure their good-looking deal. But if that’s the case, why not either tack-on or eat the remaining $50?

It’s just another layer of complexity for the consumer and it’s a weird one since most consumers are going to want more than 250 MB of data a month with an LTE connection. In fact, it’s such a weirdly small amount, that Verizon doesn’t even offer the option.

Again, I just don’t get it.