The introduction of tiered data as unlimited plans went by the way side, and has had a lot of customers in wireless carrier woe. If users are grandfathered into an unlimited data plan but are unhappy with their carrier, chances are they will stay put just for the peace of mind of not having to count GB per month.

AT&T (News - Alert) being one of the first to do away with unlimited data is now talking about shared family data plans, meaning that you can now purchase a plan for your whole brood, or, more than one iOS device, and share the data between them.

Speaking to CNet, Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T’s mobile business, indicated that AT&T already had a plan ready for shared data, and that they would be offering it soon.

“I’m very comfortable with the plan that will be offered to our customers,” de la Vega said.

De la Vega would not say, however, when this would happen or how much it would cost. Due to the competition, it seems it will be sooner rather than later.

Much to their chagrin, wireless customers pay for separate data plans on family lines despite shared minutes, and usually bemoan the extra $60-plus dollars it can cost, particularly in instances where neither person comes remotely close to the standard 2-3GB limit most companies offer. Some would rather pay for the ability to share the same allotment of data and mitigate the need for costly separate plans.

Of course, competitor Verizon Wireless (News - Alert) said they would also be offering family shared data plans, and it’s looking like that could happen as soon as this summer.

During Verizon’s Q1 earnings call recently, CFO Fran Shammo said that family data plans will launch, but he did not go into specifics on price or data bundle size. He mentioned that by mid-summer, families will have an option to share a pool of data and add devices onto it easily.

“As I said, we will be launching our data share plan in midsummer this year. We believe that plan, the way we have it designed, will enable our customers to easily connect other devices to that plan,” were his exact words.