AT&T has been slow to shift gears on its pricing in response to the bubbling consumer revolt over costs for the new iPhone.

In a report for Dow Jones Newswires, Roger Cheng and Ben Charny write: "The Dallas telecommunications giant has stubbornly kept unchanged the pricey data plans required for the Apple Inc. iPhone -- a chief complaint and impediment for consumers.”

AT&T is reluctant to offer a cheaper plan because it would lose a rich source of revenue. "In addition, investors wouldn't be happy with the lower margins," Cheng and Charny report.

In his testimony before Congress on Tuesday, Consumers Union’s Joel Kelsey discussed the predatory price gouging that’s become commonplace among wireless carriers.

The cost of text messaging, for example, has actually quadrupled since 2003.

“This rising cost in service is a head-scratcher to consumers, because text messaging uses less data than almost any other service on a wireless network,” said Kelsey. “Six hundred text messages contain less data than one minute of a phone call. If we put that into dollars and cents, at twenty cents per text, those six hundred messages would cost $120 for the equivalent of a one-minute phone call.”

Apply these exploitative practices to AT&T’s pricing plans for smart phones and there’s considerable cause for alarm.