If Pandora were to suggest a song to go along with this story, it would be "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor.
The streaming music service says it will not be affected by AT&T's recent announcement that it will begin to limit data downloads for new customers. Current customers -- even those who sign new contracts this week -- are not affected.
The announcement was long-expected. The cell phone provider had come under fire as its network sagged under the load of iPhone and iPad users streaming huge amounts of data -- all at the cost of dropped phone calls and zero bars.
Under the new plan, new customers can choose to pay $15 for 200 megabytes of data or $25 for 2 gigabytes. The phone company says the small plan should cover more than 60% of its customers and the larger will cover nearly every other user. Those who go over the new limit will pay $10 per gigabyte.
While run of the mill emailers will have plenty of data to spare (2 gigabytes of data is about equal to 10,000 emails), those who watch a whole lot of streaming video or listen to a whole lot of streaming music may go over the limits.
But Pandora says that's an incredibly small number of its customers.
"The typical Pandora listener is a very modest piece of the pie when it comes to data usage," says spokeswoman Deborah Roth. "Average listeners will use just a small fraction of data on a 2GB plan, in fact less than 0.5 percent of Pandora users will be affected by the data cap of 2GB."
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