In a speech to a tech conference this week, hinted that his employer is considering plans to bring home more bacon by -- making its wireless subscribers (i.e., iPhone owners) pay by the megabyte or live with bandwidth caps.

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, de la Vega said:

The first thing we need to do is educate customers about what represents a megabyte of data and...we're improving systems to give them real-time information about their data usage. Longer term, there's got to be some sort of pricing scheme that addresses the [heavy] users.... We are going to make sure incentives are in place to reduce or modify [data] uses so they don't crowd out others in the same cell sites.

So, to recap: The only reason to pick AT&T as your wireless provider is the iPhone. In virtually every consumer survey, it . It already charges an arm, a leg, and other vital bodily parts for a mandatory "unlimited" data plan. Now it wants to charge by the megabyte and/or put in bandwidth caps.