It’s happening all over again. Just as we saw with the original iPhone, AT&T is offering their hard-of-hearing customers the option to use their new iPhone 3G as a text-messaging communications device with none of the voice-call costs. The Text Accessibility Plan (TAP) has come to the iPhone 3G.
AT&T isn’t going to make their hearing-impaired customers pay for voice service that they’re not going to use, but that doesn’t mean AT&T isn’t going to charge them more for the TAP plan. The iPhone 3G TAP plan will see the same $10 price hike that we saw with the unlimited data plan, making TAP for iPhone 3G come in at $50 per month. Business users will be paying $65 per month for the same service.
And, to make sure that even the hearing-impaired iPhone 3G user can make an emergency voice call, AT&T will be charging $0.40 per minute of voice-use.
For those of you thinking that you can save on voice-calling costs by representing yourself as a disabled customer, be warned, there’s a qualification process to weed out the less-than-honest out there.