Think about it… most family plan/personal users are just like me – they just want to piddle around on the internet while watching TV (a much bigger market than the wireless providers would lead you to believe). That can easily be accomplished by purchasing a smart phone with wifi and using the wireless connection you already have established (or can easily establish) in your home. Most family plan/personal users like cannot afford or are not willing to pay an extra $30 per phone just to run google searches in order to solve their crossword puzzle answers.

Enter the Apple iPad – conveniently priced at $500-$900 and made just for piddling around the internet while relaxing in your chair. Interestingly enough, a data plan will run you $720 minimum if you purchase a smart phone with a 2-year contract… that just happens to be right in the middle of the iPad’s price point. Coincidence?

Here is my theory:
The market for the iPad is significantly smaller (or non-existent) if there were no mandatory data plans with all smart phones. The popularity of the iPhone puts Apple in an unusually powerful position when it comes to negotiating with the nation’s wireless providers. By eliminating options for the private user (via an expensive mandatory data plan), Apple significantly increases the market for the iPad.

How did Apple do it? I don’t think it would take much convincing to get Verizon to mandate a data plan. Even with the reduction in price of their unlimited voice plan, Verizon stands to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars of additional revenue in the first year alone. Plus Apple could sweeten the deal with iPhone rights (or other product rights) further down the road.

Then of course AT&T conveniently followed suit. I am sure the rest were easy to get on board considering the instant revenue they would gain. Plus it would be a simple matter of Apple saying “if you don’t implement the mandatory data plan, you will get no rights to the iPhone or any other of our products when/if we make them available to all providers”.

Does my theory have merit? Maybe, maybe not. I developed it because I was bothered by the noticeable lack of outrage about the mandatory data plans in the press and in the public. I wondered why the very idea of using technology to enrich our lives has suddenly been forgotten by the very companies that should be championing it.

Sadly, I cannot start my own wireless company and offer a better deal because these providers are given special rights by the FCC to use the public airwaves. By the way, where is the FCC in all of this???