When Apple announced, back in June, at WWDC (World-Wide Developers Conference) that iOS 6 would finally allow for Facetime video chat over cellular, we were left wondering how carriers would handle this situation. Sprint has already announced that they won’t charge for Facetime, remaining unlimited. Verizon will also not charge for Facetime, mainly to adhere to their net neutrality agreement. AT&T however said that they may end up charging for it, but that it would make a decision later. That decision has been made and it looks like AT&T won’t charge for Facetime, assuming you sign up for one of their new Shared Data Plans. Without one of these new plans, you won’t be able to use Facetime without Wifi.
AT&T’s Official Statement:
AT&T will offer FaceTime over Cellular as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans, which were created to meet customers’ growing data needs at a great value. With Mobile Share, the more data you use, the more you save. FaceTime will continue to be available over Wi-Fi for all our customers.
AT&T is most likely pulling these shenanigans to get customers who are still on those grandfathered unlimited plans to switch over to the shared plans that feature a data cap to avoid all that free data people would be using with video chatting.
So if you’re unwilling to leave your grandfathered unlimited plan, are one a family plan or individual plan and want to use Facetime over cellular, you’re out of luck.