Thinking of checking out Cingular’s Unlimited Laptop 3G service?

From Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection

Cingular Wireless 3G Laptop Connect, No Thank You

Well I thought today that I’d look into Cingular’s new 3G Laptop Connect service that they are presently hyping in most major metropolitan cities where available. If you look on the back page of the front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle you will find a full page ad for this new service. My consensus, instead of Cingular’s company being “raising the bar,” it should instead be “boning the customer.”

First off I was told that in order to get the service you have to buy a card for your laptop from Cingular. The price for the card? $149.99 *with* a TWO YEAR service commitment. Now they do have an annoying to have to mail in $100 mail in rebate, but still, they are going to charge you for this card plus require a two year commitment?

But it gets worse. When I first spoke with the rep she quoted me a price of $44.99 for unlimited wireless internet usage. Ok, sounds a bit pricey when you can get an awful lot of wi-fi for free these days but I was still listening. She then asked me if I was a Cingular customer. I told her that I was an AT&T Wireless customer but that my bill had a big bold Cingular Wireless “raising the bar” logo on the front of it and that I paid them $100 last month and have been paying them quite a bit recently.