According to an AT&T employee, the carrier will soon be making an offer to customers that some may find quite strange. AT&T will be offering higher data caps (allowing more mobile data usage) for only $5 extra per month. This is quite significant because of the relatively small price increase compared to the larger data increase, giving customers better value for their money.

AT&T subscribers can thank competition with the Verizon iPhone for a plethora of improvements, including unlimited mobile to any mobile carrier, 1,000 free rollover minutes, and now an extra 2GB of bandwidth for the DataPro tethering plan. There’s still no personal hotspot feature support, but that’s more Apple’s fault than anything else. We’ll see what happens when iOS 4.3 makes in onto our iPhones.

If you’re a little bummed that you’re still an AT&T subscriber when you could be on Verizon now that they have an iPhone, rest assured, you still have a plethora of reasons to be happy staying put. First, you likely have a faster data connection that’s usable while talking. AT&T recently added a new unlimited mobile to any mobile feature with unlimited texting free of charge, and now you can even bank an extra 1,000 rollover minutes just for saying “Yes.”

Today, AT&T posted a message on their site that indicates they’re going to expand their unlimited mobile to mobile feature to include any mobile on any carrier. Details are basically nonexistent other than the image above, but we know this much: AT&T intends to bundle this with their unlimited texting plan, and it’s obviously intended to draw consumers away from Verizon now that the iPhone is available on multiple carriers in the US. But is it enough?

If you’ve been waiting for iOS 4.3, your wait may be coming to an end. We now have ample reason to believe that Apple will be releasing iOS 4.3—which will include the in-app subscription and personal hotspot features—in less than two weeks. Not only that, but AT&T may even support the personal hotspot feature on their network along with their recently announced increasing data caps for tethering plans just before Valentine’s Day.

Yesterday’s Verizon announcement may have you feeling as if your iPhone 4 is somehow less feature-packed than Verizon’s with their personal hotspot feature. It’s a tempting feature, after all; share your internet connection with up to five other WiFi enabled devices (let’s ignore any data caps for the time being). But worry not, for this feature is said to be coming in to GSM iPhones with iOS 4.3. Of course, having a feature doesn’t mean you can do anything with it, since it’s still up to each individual carrier as to whether they want to support it.

Pre-orders for iPhone 4 start tomorrow, and demand will likely be high. That means you should figure out where, when and how you’ll be getting your hands on the next generation iPhone. Pre-order or drop day? Online or retail? Delivery or in-store pickup? Black or white? Past the break are the details for Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and WalMart.

Today, AT&T announced their new tiered and capped iPhone (and iPad) data plan subscription options. New options include Data Plus, $15 per month for 200MB of data, and Data Pro, $25 per month for 2GB of data. Data Pro plans can add a tethering option for $20 a month. Starting June 7th, unlimited plans, which used to cost $30 a month, will no longer be an option for new customers. But before you get too worried…

Remember last year when Apple announced the iPhone 3GS? AT&T didn’t intend to allow iPhone 3G owners to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS at the advertised (reduced) price. After much unhappiness, they relented and allowed iPhone 3G early adopters to get the upgrade price they wanted. Well, fast forward to now. Looks like AT&T might be preparing to avoid that happening again by just moving back the upgrade eligibilities for current iPhone 3GS owners.

In what is an apparent response to Verizon’s price cuts (as opposed to an act of customer good will), AT&T will offer their unlimited voice and data plans for $99.99 per month starting Monday January 18th, 2010. The unlimited plan does not include text messaging, but is available for AT&T phones, including the iPhone.