Close on the heels of an earlier announcement that the iPhone's exclusive US carrier, AT&T, intends providing incentives to encourage bandwidth-guzzling users to "reduce or modify their usage," Ralph de la Vega, AT&T's president and CEO of mobility and consumer markets, clarified that the carrier would not implement any tiered data plans.

With the previous statement implying that higher charge for high-bandwidth users was inevitable; it was being presumed that AT&T would diverge from its current unlimited iPhone data plan. However, de la Vega recently elucidated: "We have not made any decision to implement tiered pricing."

Rather, since the last-year-introduced free Wi-Fi hotspots feature reportedly being a stupendous success, AT&T intends making more free Wi-Fi hotspots available for its mobile users. The company, currently offering over 20,000 hotspots, said that after the introduction of iPhone OS 3.0, as many as 15 million users connected to its Wi-Fi network in one single quarter this year.

Furthermore, AT&T specified that it is investing in "femtocells" - a device that offers 3.2Mbit/sec 3G service, and can serve as a mini cellular tower for Internet connection within the users' home. Earlier this year, "femtocells" was tested in Charlotte, N. C.

AT&T expects more free Wi-Fi hotspots offering as well as furthering "femtocells" would help it alleviate some of the pressure on its network that has caused the much-criticized issues like dropped calls and spotty reception.