Mobile Internet Data Plans

Yesterday, my wife and I had an ultimate Frisbee game scheduled for 6:30pm. It was our third pre-season game. Our first two games took place at "Kennet fields." For some reason, I thought that our third game was scheduled to take place at "Stetson fields."

So it's 6:15 and we pull in to the Stetson Middle School. There were several sports fields, but every one of them was already occupied by either softball players or lacrosse players.

We spent at least 20 minutes driving and walking around the school looking for our fellow ultimate Frisbee players. No luck.

It would have been the perfect time for me to make use of my mobile phone's Internet capabilities. My phone has a 3-inch touch-screen and a slide-out keyboard. Packed in its holster, my mobile phone should have been ready to rumble, bridging me to the Internet so I could get help.

Unfortunately, I don't have a data plan. Why? They're just too expensive!

Am I just being too cheap or are these plans still too expensive for casual use? I would love to check my Gmail, read my Google Reader feeds, navigate Google Maps, have access to my Google Calendar, browse Digg, and otherwise just surf the Internet, all on the go.

My phone allows it (I have the T-Mobile MDA).
I definitely could benefit from the use of it (like yesterday).

It's just too expensive! My phone bill is currently about $80 per month, and adding a data plan would add $30. I just can't justify paying $30 per month for this. Am I alone here?

Why isn't the cost of these data plans coming down? The iPhone is rumored to have a $30 data plan. Cingular's data plans range from $35-$45. Verizon's data plans range from $30-$40. Sprint's data plans range from $40-$60.

Update. Turns out, Cingular has a pretty nice plan at $20 (Unlimited MEdia Net Data and 200 Text/Video/Picture Messages). Thanks for the heads up, readers!

Maybe it's just me, but I won't be adding a data plan to my account until the cost comes way down. I might consider it at $15 per month. At $10 per month, I'd switch carriers to get the mobile access to the web. But for now, I'll have to do without.

PS: My wife and I made it to our ultimate game. We ended up calling a buddy of mine, who was near a computer and was able to look up a phone number for us. Turns out, our game was at Kennet fields, 15 minutes away.