AT&T Alters Vita’s 3G Pricing Plans

AT&T has revised its 3G service plans for the PlayStation Vita, bumping the top-tier plan up to a higher cost, higher bandwidth option.

At CES, the carrier announced that there would be two plans, one offering 250MB a month for $14.99, and another offering 2GB a month for $25. According to a posting on the official PlayStation Website, that 2GB plan has now been axed. In its place is a $30-a-month 3GB plan. The other details of the plans — no contract, recurring opt out, free Wi-Fi hotspot access — have remained the same.

It's unclear exactly what sparked the change. The new plan does offer more bandwidth at a cheaper per-GB rate, but the cap still isn't high enough to justify anything other than web browsing and gameplay over the 3G connection. It's still too low to download even a single retail title from the PSN Store, and likely still too low to stream content through the Vita's inbound Netflix app. Judging by Sony's previous official statements, it seems like the 3G connection will only be enabled for the browser, some less intensive apps, and online play in a select set of games.

I can't imagine the intended uses would ever push past the old 2GB limit, so they're effectively charging $5 more for an extra gigabyte that no one will ever really use.