AT&T is offering a choice (better than Verizon's approach)

I agree. It is sort of crazy how I've watched two different industries go completely insane with their costs yet a decent percentage of the population just pays it. As long as AT&T or Verizon keep slapping shiny new smartphones into the hands of some people, they'll continue to give them a car payment for a cell bill.

At some point, even when something is better, if you can't utilize it that much more, the better won't matter.

My television providers offer me hundreds of channels, many in high definition with whole house DVR's. They want to provide and offer this for well over $100 a month when back in they day, I used to give them $30 or so for whole house analog cable. Their solution today is much better but I don't watch 300-400% more television for the increased cost. So we use an antenna and Netflix/Redbox/Roku.

My cell phone, an iPhone 4S is massively better than the last phone I had with Verizon, an LG Dare. However with the LG Dare, my wife and I had unlimited feature phone 3G data, more minutes than we could use, unlimited text and four phones all for $140 a month. The same type of plan today would cost $160 just to have four smartphones active and then 8 gigs of data is $210 a month. I'm not using my phones that much more to justify the rising costs. Perhaps I might use them a bit more in terms of playing a game or listening to my media but I own my media and the games don't use or need network time.

If you avoid streaming, then most people simply don't need gobs of data and if you have half a brain, then you can really save yourself massive money over these plans via prepaid and using wifi. Most won't though. They'll just spend $150 on television programming, $150-200 on their cell phones and then complain someone else made them broke.