Let's connect a couple of recent news stories:
(1) CES was all about tablets. Tablets tablets tablets. 70 of the things. iPad is already selling well, the Samsung Galaxy Tab hasn't been a disaster and now everyone else wants to sell us one of these things too
(2) Tmobile has cut back its mobile broadband cap to half a gig - a paltry amount if, say, you stream a lot of video or music but adequate for a bit of light phone browsing.
So what? Someone at Tmobile has spotted that their customers are all about to buy new tablets, stick their old phone SIM cards in them and neither pay Tmobile anything for the hardware nor even sign up to a new contract.
It's a defensive play to pretend the world hasn't moved on from the old telco model of selling customers a new handset every year and charging them for voice bandwidth. It's not especially evil, and it might even be smart, at least unless one of the carriers doesn't play and we all just move over there.
