A couple carriers in the US just announced some big changes to their wireless data offerings, and it’s not very good news overall.

The better news comes out of AT&T, which announced today some new data plans it will be implementing shortly. The bad news is that subscribers to these new plans will be paying more each month than existing customers have. On the flip side, though, they’re also getting more data than is allocated to existing plans.

Starting January 22, the following plans will be available for smartphones:

Data Plus 300MB: $20 for 300MB

Data Pro 3GB: $30 for 3GB

Data Pro 5GB: $50 for 5GB, with mobile hotspot / tethering

Additionally, tablet users will be able to get wireless service on their devices with the same sort of plans, at either $30 for 3GB or $50 for 5GB.

On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be an upside (for subscribers, at least) to changes being implemented by Virgin Mobile. Starting March 23, if you exceed 2.5GB of data in a month (and, presumably, we’re talking about both uploads and downloads here), you’ll see your access throttled. The consequences for exceeding that limit? Download speeds limited to 256Kbps; no fun at all.

Source: AT&T, Virgin Mobile

Via: IntoMobile, PhoneScoop