By Dana Roberts

Posted July 23rd 2010

VALID THROUGH JULY 25TH!

Haven’t seen the latest box office blockbuster? This Sunday, July 25, AMC Lowes is giving movie fans a break at the concession stand. You can buy any size fountain drink and popcorn for just one dollar each. Just click on the “claim coupon” button, enter your information and print your individual coupons for soda and popcorn, which can be used together, but not with any other offers. The coupons are valid for one moviegoer only, so if you’re going with a group, make sure to pass this deal on to them before you meet up. AMC Glendale 12, AMC Olde Town 14, and all Canadian locations are not participating in this offer. Now sit back, enjoy the show and know you got a great deal!

RIDGE PARK SQUARES IS AN AMC LOWES THEATER

By Andrew Taylor

Posted July 22nd 2010

7 weeks after benefits started lapsing, aid for the unemployed is reinstated!

WASHINGTON — State unemployment agencies are gearing up to resume sending unemployment payments to millions of people as Congress moves to ship President Barack Obama a measure to restore lapsed benefits.

After months of increasingly bitter stalemate, the Senate passed the measure Wednesday by a 59-39 vote. Obama is poised to sign the measure into law after a final House vote on Thursday.

It’s a welcome relief to 2½ million people who been out of work for six months or more have seen their benefits lapse.

Under best-case scenarios, unemployed people who have been denied jobless benefits because of a partisan Senate standoff over renewing them can expect retroactive payments as early as next week in some states. In other states, it will take longer.

State unemployment and labor agencies have been preparing for weeks for Congress to restore jobless payments averaging $309 a week for almost 5 million people whose 26 weeks of state benefits have run out. Those people are enrolled in a federally financed program providing up to 73 additional weeks of unemployment benefits.

About half of those eligible have had their benefits cut off since funding expired June 2. They are eligible for lump sum retroactive payments that are typically delivered directly to their bank accounts or credited to state-issued debit cards.

In states like Pennsylvania and New York, the back payments should go out next week, officials said. In others, like Nevada, it may take a few weeks for all of those eligible to receive benefits, said Mae Worthey, a spokesman for the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

In North Carolina, Employment and Income Department spokesman Andrew James says to expect a wait of two to six weeks.

The Senate continued debating the measure a full day after a GOP filibuster was defeated by a 60-40 vote. Senate rules required 30 hours of debate, but missing no opportunity to seize a political edge, Democrats attacked Republicans for not waiving them and requiring an additional day of debate.

“Republicans are declaring an all-out war on unemployed Americans,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “Even though Democrats have the votes to give unemployed workers the safety net they deserve, Republicans are callously delaying the vote for an entire day.”

In fact, the measure could have been passed months ago had Democrats not insisted on coupling it with a host of other, more controversial legislation, such as tax increases on hedge fund managers and on some small businesses that were used to pay to renew a popular package of tax breaks for individuals and businesses.

The resulting delays required two temporary unemployment insurance extensions — one came only after a lapse in coverage because Reid adjourned the Senate for its two-week Easter recess rather than engage in a time-consuming battle with Republicans. Benefits were restored retroactively.

Democrats have become more aggressive in attacking the GOP for opposing the measure, which has been stripped down so that it’s essentially limited to a $34 billion, six-month renewal of unemployment insurance for the chronically jobless.

Republicans say they support the benefits extension but insist any benefits be financed by cuts to programs elsewhere in the $3.7 trillion federal budget. Maine GOP moderates Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were the only Republicans to support the bill Wednesday.

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the only Democrat to break with his party to oppose the bill.

Many Republicans have voted in the past for deficit-financed benefits extension, including as recently as March and twice in 2008, during the Bush administration. But now they are casting themselves as opposing out-of-control budget deficits, a stand that’s popular with their core conservative supporters and tea party activists whose support they’re courting in hopes of retaking control of Congress.

Democrats tout the economy-boosting effect of unemployment checks since most beneficiaries spend them immediately, and they say that paying for them with cuts to other programs dilutes the stimulative effect.

“Extending unemployment insurance isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also the smart thing to do for our economy,” said Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

But a proposals but Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to spread the spending cuts over the upcoming decade garnered 54 votes — including 14 Democrats — only to fail because Reid had placed Coburn in a parliamentary situation requiring a two-thirds supermajority to prevail.

Economists say the measure will likely have a modest beneficial effect on the economy. It represents less than one-quarter of 1 percent of the size of the $14.6 trillion economy, and is far smaller than last year’s $862 billion stimulus legislation. Republicans have blocked Democratic add-ons, such as aid to state governments, that could have meant a greater economic boost.

Posted July 19th 2010

State, county and local officials will be on hand Monday morning for a news conference and celebration at Cleveland’s Hugo Boss plant. Workers are set to celebrate the ‘First suit off the line.”

Nearly 200 employees are back to work after the plant nearly shut down last December. In April, Hugo Boss workers ratified an agreement to keep the facility open. The local facility is the company’s only production plant in the United States.

The plant nearly closed in April, but efforts from celebrities, lawmakers and workers helped keep the facility open. Actor Danny Glover was one of the individuals who helped champion the movement to keep the Brooklyn plant from closing.

The news conference is scheduled for 10:45 a.m., at the Hugo Boss plant on Tiedeman Road in Cleveland.

Fast Forward By Rob Pagora

Posted July 15th 2010

All you southpaw iPhone 4 users can freak out. Consumer Reports conducted its own research into the phone’s fading reception when held with a palm or a finger covering a gap between its external antennas. The magazine found that the problem goes beyond the software flaw Apple cited last week, and it now refuses to recommend the device.

Consumer Reports’ Mike Gikas described these findings in a post on the Yonkers, N.Y.,-based magazine’s site this morning:

We reached this conclusion after testing all three of our iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of CU’s radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber. In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers. We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.

(1:18 p.m. A comment below reminded me that Gikas had expressed skepticism about iPhone 4 reception complaints in a July 2 post, written a day before he encountered this issue himself.)

As a result, CR declined to recommend the new phone, declaring that “Apple needs to come up with a permanent — and free — fix for the antenna problem before we can recommend the iPhone 4.”
.
The magazine also questioned Apple’s explanation of the problem–“totally wrong” software that overstates the strength of AT&T’s wireless signal.

Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4’s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that “mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”

As a temporary fix, CR endorsed the remedy that my colleague Michael Rosenwald suggested weeks ago, as noted in my review: covering that gap with some non-conducting tape. CR also plans to research which iPhone cases prevent this problem.

All this puts Apple in an awkward spot. One of the most trusted consumer publications in America just said its flagship product is defective and, in the bargain, just implied that Apple made up its excuse for the problem.

I’ve got a query into Apple for comment. While I wait on that, I’d like to get your read on the situation. Who do you believe? And what do you expect will happen next?

By Charles Wallace

Posted July 11th 2010

Although the Obama administration no longer uses the phrase “stimulus,” it does support spending $35.5 billion to extend benefits for the nation’s unemployed and $50 billion to aid states hoping to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters.” From an economic perspective, is this really a good way to stimulate the economy and avoid the chances of a double-dip recession?

This is a hotly debated topic among economists right now. Augustine Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s economy.com, says economic growth will soften in the second half of the year and that the chances of falling into recession again by year-end have risen to about 25%.

Faucher believes the government should spend between $80 billion and $100 billion on a second stimulus package to get the economy past these obstacles.

“The two most useful forms would be extended unemployment insurance benefits and aid to state governments,” Faucher says, “because these would both be effective from a bang-for-the-buck perspective. You get a lot of stimulus dollars spent, and the money also gets into the economy quickly.”

Deficit Worries, Infrastructure Opportunities

However, both proposals have been blocked by Republicans in Congress, who argue that the additional spending won’t be offset by new revenues and would add to the deficit, which is another hot-button issue in this election year.

Faucher maintains that spending a dollar on extending unemployment benefits or aid to state governments produces more of an increase in GDP than the same dollar spent on tax cuts. If state employees like teachers are laid off, Faucher says, “they cut back on their spending, and that weighs on economic growth.”

But Andrew Samwick, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, says the proposed stimulus of about $80 billion is too small to do much good. He adds that unemployment benefits aren’t the most efficient way to stimulate the economy.

“You’re giving them money, but they’re not giving you anything in return,” Samwick says, rejecting the argument that unemployment benefits are usually spent immediately and thereby sustain the economy. “There’s no virtue in spending money — the government could do that directly,” he says.

Samwick says he’d like the government to commit to a long-term spending plan costing hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars to address the country’s infrastructure needs, such as developing a smart grid for electricity distribution.

“All of those things use material that has to be produced, which means it creates jobs, or it creates new opportunities for people, where it creates employment as well,” Samwick says. “Why is that not better than just giving the money to the states to compensate them for their own budget challenges or the unemployed?”

Recovery May Begin at Home

Karen Dynan, vice president and co-director of the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., says such large stimulus programs would be hard to justify, given the size of the budget gap and the deficit’s upward trajectory. Some estimates project the federal debt will hit more than $20 trillion by 2020.

Dynan says by extending unemployment insurance benefits, the government would be not only help the households that have been the hardest hit by the recession, but would also sustain their level of spending.

“Many people have had to cut their spending, sometimes drastically, because of the loss of income,” Dynan says. “If they can sustain their spending, that that will benefit the economy, because you’d stimulate overall demand for goods and services.”

Dynan acknowledges that there are downsides to unemployment benefits, including the possibility that some people will be less motivated to look for work. But because the current labor market remains poor — unemployment is at 9.5% — even if some individuals are less inclined to seek work, plenty of others would be willing to fill empty jobs, she says.

Uncle Sam vs. The Private Sector

Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, says the idea of spending government funds to promote economic growth is a flawed idea. “The fundamental question is: Do you think that the private sector would do a better job of fostering economic growth and job creation, or do you think politicians and bureaucrats would do that?”

DeHaven says that continuing to finance state sector jobs like teachers diverts resources away from the private sector, which would use the money more efficiently and ultimately create more job opportunities.

And, of course, a dispute continues among economists about whether the first Obama stimulus actually had an economic benefit and created worthwhile jobs. “I think the entire history of trying to buy jobs with government spending has largely been a failure,” says John Antos, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

But Faucher of economy.com disagrees. “I think the situation would be much, much worse without the first stimulus,” he says. “We’d be talking about an unemployment rate of 11%-12%. It has been effective.”

“Large, Positive Multipliers”

One of the most definitive studies of the $800 billion stimulus was provided in a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Economist Daniel J. Wilson said Obama’s stimulus program had created or saved 800,000 jobs as of May, 2010. But he said if the cutoff date had been three months earlier, the stimulus would have created 2 million jobs, but many of those jobs, especially in construction, weren’t long-lasting.

Said Wilson: “The results strongly suggest that infrastructure and other general spending efforts have large, positive multipliers while spending on safety-net type of programs may actually reduce employment.”

Posted July 4th 2010

Valid through August 10
School’s out for the summer! Keep your kids busy (and cool!) with this deal from AMC Entertainment. Every Tuesday from now through August 10, admission to a 10 a.m. show is only $1 per ticket. The offer is good for the 10 a.m. show only and for preselected, previously-released classic family-friendly films including “Kung Fu Panda,” “Madagascar” and “Hotel for Dogs.” Tickets will go quickly, so make sure to pick yours up when they go on sale a week before the scheduled flick. Also, AMC is offering a concession combo for kids that includes a soft drink, popcorn and snack for $4 – more than 30% off the regular price. Knowing that all the proceeds are being donated to Variety – The Children’s Charity and the Will Rogers Institute makes us love this deal even more. Click here to see a list of participating theaters.

There is an AMC Theatre at Ridge Park Square!

Posted June 28th 2010

Oohh, shiny new computer. Fancy. Fun! But then comes the hard part — how do I get all my important stuff from the old machine over to the new one?

The last thing you want is to suddenly realize you no longer have that important something from the outdated computer you just gave to your nephew or donated to charity. When purchasing a new computer, the key is having a plan for migrating your important files, photos, songs and videos before you unplug the old machine and start up the new one.

Evaluating Your Data

If you’ve had your computer for a few years, by now it is surely loaded with all kinds of things: old resumes, tax returns, vacation pictures, videos from your cousin, Internet bookmarks, MP3s and who knows what else. Does it all need to come with you?

Remember, we’re not talking about moving over the software. Any programs you want to use on a new computer should be freshly reinstalled to ensure it’s configured properly for that machine.

As for files like documents, photos, songs and videos, sometimes the easiest thing to do is simply copy everything from the old computer to the new one, since it probably has a bigger hard drive than your current machine. But a little “cleaning out the attic” couldn’t hurt, either. So first, take a look at what’s on the computer and decide if it all needs to make the move. If not, kick it to the recycling bin.

Get a Move On

Perhaps the simplest way to copy files from an old computer to a new one is to burn them to a CD. If you’re not moving very much, or if what you’re moving consists of relatively small files like Word documents, everything may fit on a disc or two. (Each one holds around 650-900 MB.) Then all you have to do is copy the contents from the CD over to your new computer.

This method is quick, relatively easy and has the added benefit of leaving you with a semi-permanent copy of your files on a type of media you can store safely and expect to last at least a decade. That is, a CD won’t crash like a hard drive could.

External Hard Drive

External hard drives store much more data than a CD-ROM, and they are becoming incredibly affordable — today you can find a portable drive holding up to 1 terabyte of data for as little as $75. (A terabyte equals 1,000 gigabytes — which is to say, it’s an enormous amount of space. The entire Library of Congress is 160 terabytes.)

These hard drives are easy to set up, usually connecting to a computer with a USB cable. And transferring files to a hard drive is very fast, much quicker than burning a CD.

The potential downside is that any hard drive could crash and lose data. These drives’ portability can be a convenience, but also presents a risk if the drive is lost, stolen, dropped or submerged in your Big Gulp. But if all you need to do is transfer a few gigabytes of data from point A to point B, it’s a pretty quick solution.

Use a Home Network

Sometimes it’s nice to have a little period of overlap during which you keep your old computer while getting the new one up and running. If you have room in your office for two computers, having both available and connected through a home network could give you the best of both worlds.

With the latest Windows and Mac operating systems, setting up a home network no longer requires a PhD in computer science. If you have a wireless network in your home, transferring files from one computer to another is a snap — just drag and drop.

The disadvantage to this solution is that it requires additional hardware, in the form of a router. Also, it doesn’t leave you with a backup of your old files, which would be the case if you’d copied them over with a CD or hard drive.

Up in the Clouds

Finally, there are a variety of online storage services that can help with this process. These services store your files in the “cloud,” a metaphor that basically means your stuff is available from any Internet connection — a computer, mobile phone or other portable device such as an iPad.

These services take the guesswork out of backing up a computer, by automatically figuring out which files have changed and backing them up on their own. When moving from one computer to another, you’d first upload everything from the old computer to the cloud, then download it from the cloud to the new computer.

As noted, this solution allows you access to your files not just from your new computer but from anywhere there’s an Internet connection — your office, school, library, or on the go with a mobile device.

The other advantage is security. Most reputable online storage companies, such as SugarSync, use “geo-redundancy” to ensure your data is kept safe — which means they have multiple data centers, so if there’s a problem at one location your files would not be lost. This would provide a layer of protection above and beyond storing files on a CD or hard drive.

By Fran Golden

Posted June 22nd 2010

Airlines are offering to waive $25 checked baggage fees if you sign up for a branded credit card, But are these offers a good deal?

The Detroit News took a look and says the offers by carriers including Continental and Delta come with a catch: The cards themselves have annual fees – $85 for the Continental OnePass card with Chase and $95 for the Delta Gold Skymiles card with American Express.

“They’re giving with one hand and taking away with the other,” Daniel Ray, editor in chief of the CreditCards.com card comparison site, told the News.

Bill Hardekopf, CEO of credit-card comparison site LowCards.com, says the card issuers are raising money through the fees, telling the newspaper, “they’re using the (baggage) rewards as an add-on to justify the fee.”

Elite frequent flyers are exempt from baggage fees, but for those who have to pay the News advises if you aren’t checking bags very often you may be better off paying the fees, “instead of shelling out for annual credit card memberships.”

But of course with carriers charging $50 per checked bag on a round trip, if you know you are going to check bags on two or more round trips a year, you can save by getting a card.

Ray said he expects other carriers to launch similar card offers. He points out in addition to bringing in fees, the cards are also useful to carriers in building brand loyalty.

By Bob Dyer

Posted June 12th 2010

Giveaways are part of Kia’s ties to NBA!

The last time a Cleveland sports team won a major championship — waaaay back near the middle of the previous century — the game’s MVP was a nice fellow named Gary Collins.

A wide receiver who doubled as the punter (seriously!), Collins caught three touchdown passes on the afternoon of Dec. 27, 1964, to lead the Browns over the Baltimore Colts.

A prominent monthly magazine of the time, Sport, rewarded him with a shiny new Corvette convertible.

Collins was thrilled. The car’s book value was $3,900, and he gladly paid the $274 sales tax.

For Collins, the son of a coal miner, the car was a major upgrade. According to Terry Pluto’s book When All the World Was Browns Town, Collins was accustomed to commuting to practice in a VW Beetle owned by offensive tackle and fellow Aurora resident Dick Schafrath.

”It had no heater or defroster,” Schafrath said. ”When it snowed, one of us had to roll down the window, hang our head out and try to scrape the ice off the windshield.”

Have you noticed that things have changed just a teensy bit since then?

Cleveland’s most recent MVP, fellow by the
name of James, has been given two new cars in the past two years — and hasn’t touched either one.

LeBron donated the first car to the Akron Urban League. He donated the second to the Summa Foundation.

Heck, LeBron drove a $104,000 customized Hummer in high school. He showed up to his first MVP ceremony in a radically customized Ferrari Spyder. What’s he going to do with a Kia?

The Urban League received a black 2009 Borrego, a crossover utility vehicle that stickers for $28,395. Summa got a black 2011 Sorento, another crossover SUV that retails for $25,225.

Although the first MVP presentation was in May of last year, the Urban League’s car wasn’t delivered until the end of October. Local Kia dealer Jerry VanDevere was pictured in your favorite newspaper handing the keys to CEO Bernett Williams.

But, as it turns out, that was all for show. Nobody has been driving the car. In fact, Kia’s contract forbids the recipient of a donated MVP car from giving it to anyone for one year.

Why? Who knows? Kia declined to comment. Maybe the company wants the public to think NBA superstars are actually driving its cars.

Take a chance

In any event, when LeBron’s first MVP car finally hits the road, you could be the one behind the wheel.

The Urban League is raffling it off to raise money. The group will sell a maximum of 300 tickets at $100 apiece, ideally raking in $30,000 of pure profit.

Those 1-in-300 odds are a whole lot better than buying lottery tickets. (If you’re feeling lucky, mail your check to the group’s headquarters: 440 Vernon Odom Blvd., Akron 44307. For more information, call 234-542-4141.)

The Urban League’s Williams says about 100 tickets have been sold, and she’s not the least bit worried about selling the predetermined minimum of 200.

If LeBron announces he’s staying with the Cavs before the Aug. 13 drawing, she’ll no doubt see an instant surge in sales.

The Summa Foundation hasn’t figured out exactly what to do with its car, but, because of the one-year holding period, there’s certainly no hurry. Summa spokeswoman Julie Uehara says it most likely will be auctioned or raffled.

The keys to Summa’s car were handed to LeBron at the University of Akron’s Rhodes Arena on a drizzly Sunday afternoon early last month. He jokingly pretended to pitch them backward over his head, and never set foot in the car. But even a tenuous connection to one of the world’s most famous athletes is enough to make some consumers lust for ownership.

The 85-year-old Urban League is a nonprofit, social-
service agency that specializes in helping Summit County minorities. The 34-year-old Summa Foundation supports patient care, medical education and research.

Favorite charities

So how did LeBron settle on those particular charities?

Well, he was born at Summa’s City Hospital, and his mother has done volunteer work there. Last year, the mother of his children, Savannah Brinson, served as honorary chairwoman for the annual fundraiser, the Sapphire Ball, which helped pay for the remodeling of the Women’s Health Center.

LeBron had no direct childhood connection to the Urban League, says Williams, but he has been involved with a number of youth programs since turning pro, including a Nike book-bag giveaway, the distribution of school supplies and his highest-
profile charity event, the annual Bikeathon (set this year for Aug. 7).

NBA sponsor

Kia’s car giveaways are just a small part of its huge NBA sponsorship package. The price of the cars is peanuts compared to the publicity the company gets in exchange.

In contemporary sports, sponsorship is the name of the game. Think it was coincidence that, just minutes before LeBron’s MVP ceremony at UA, workers were scrambling to cover up some adidas logos on the front of the stands?

If you don’t think that had anything to do with LeBron being a Nike guy, I have some used sneakers I’d like to sell you.

Meanwhile, Gary Collins is still kicking himself for selling his MVP Corvette two years after he got it.

Decades later, his son tracked it down and discovered it was owned by a fellow in Arizona who had it on the market for $51,000 — more than double the average NFL salary in 1964.

By Peter Svensson

Posted June 8th 2010

Current subscribers can keep $30-a-month unlimited usage plan

NEW YORK – Just in time for the release of a new iPhone, AT&T will stop letting new customers sign up for its unlimited Internet data plan for smart phones and iPads and charge more for users who hog the most bandwidth.

AT&T hopes to ease congestion on its network, which has drawn complaints, particularly in big cities. But the approach could confuse customers unfamiliar with how much data it takes to watch a YouTube video or fire up a favorite app.

Current subscribers will be able to keep their $30-per-month unlimited plans, even if they renew their contracts. But starting Monday, new customers will have to choose one of two new data plans for all smart phones, including iPhones and BlackBerrys.

Subscribers who use little data — like those who may get dozens of e-mails a day but don’t watch much video — will pay slightly less every month than they do now, while heavy users will be dinged with higher bills.

In time for new iPhone
The move takes effect in time for the expected unveiling of Apple’s new iPhone next week. Analysts said they expect other phone companies to follow. With no caps on consumption, data use could swamp wireless networks while revenue for the operators remains flat.

Verizon Wireless, the largest wireless carrier and AT&T’s chief rival, had no immediate comment on AT&T’s move. There has been much speculation about Verizon getting to sell its own version of the iPhone, but that prospect still appears distant.

One of the new AT&T plans will cost $25 per month and offer two gigabytes of data per month, which AT&T says will be enough for 98 percent of its smart phone customers. Additional gigabytes will cost $10 each.

A second plan will cost $15 per month for 200 megabytes of data, which AT&T says is enough for 65 percent of its smart phone customers. If they go over, they’ll pay another $15 for 200 more megabytes.

A gigabyte is enough for hundreds of e-mails and Web pages, but it’s quickly eaten up by Internet video and videoconferencing. The 200 megabytes offered under the $15 plan is enough for more than 1,000 e-mails, hundreds of Web pages and about 20 minutes of streaming video, AT&T says.

With the smaller plan and voice service, a smart phone could cost as little as $55 per month before taxes and add-on fees, down from $70 now. Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T’s consumer business, said smart phones would become accessible to more people.

“Customers are getting a good deal, and if they can understand their usage, they can save some money,” de la Vega said in an interview.

Does not apply to Wi-Fi use
Figuring out which plan to choose may not be easy, because many people have only a hazy notion of the size of a gigabyte and how many they use now. By contrast, a minute spent talking on the phone is easy to understand, and many people have learned roughly how many minutes they use every month.

The limits will apply only on AT&T’s cellular networks. Data usage over Wi-Fi networks, including AT&T’s public Wi-Fi “hot spots,” will not count toward the limits.

De la Vega noted that AT&T lets customers track their usage online. The iPhone also has a built-in usage tracking tool. And the carrier will also text subscribers to let them know they’re getting close to their limits.

Jason Prance, an iPhone 3G user in Atlanta, said his first reaction to the end of unlimited usage was to be “ticked off.”

“If you’re taking the ability to go unlimited away from people, you immediately get defensive,” he said.

But then he checked his data consumption on his iPhone for the first time and found he had never used more than 200 megabytes in a month. That surprised him, he said, because he sends and receives a lot of e-mail and watches online video now and then.

Now he figures he can save $30 per month by switching himself and his wife to the $15 plan.

New iPad plan
For the iPad, the tablet computer Apple released a few months ago, the new $25-per-month plan will replace the $30 unlimited plan. IPad owners can keep the old unlimited plan as long as they keep paying $30 per month, AT&T said.

AT&T, based in Dallas, said the new plans shouldn’t materially affect its profits this year. Its stock rose 34 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $24.67 in Wednesday afternoon trading.

Customer rebellion
Customers have rebelled against the idea of data usage caps on broadband Internet at home, at least when limits are set low enough to make online video expensive. Time Warner Cable was forced to back away from trials of data caps last year after protests and threats of legislative action.

On wireless networks, where there’s less data capacity to go around, usage caps have been more common. Most wireless carriers, for

With competition for smart phone users intense, phone companies have been reluctant to impose data caps on those devices, although Sprint Nextel Corp. reserves the right to slow down or disconnect users who exceed 5 gigabytes per month.

Carriers have also started to lift limits on other use, selling plans with unlimited calling and text messaging. That’s not a big gamble because not many people have the time to talk on the phone for eight hours a day or spend every waking minute sending text messages. Smart phones, on the other hand, can draw a lot of data, depending on where and how they’re used.