Will All Those Different Data Plans Hurt Samsung's Galaxy Tab?

The Samsung Galaxy tablet is starting to be sold widely - every major US wireless carrier is going to be selling the device.  And every one is selling it at a different price and with a different priced data plan.  For example, on T-Mobile, it's $399 on contract and $599 without.

That means the T-Mobile contract subsidy is $200 over 24 months, about $9/month.  T-Mobile's data plans are exactly the same - the same price whether your are on contract or not (so not much of an incentive to be contract-free) and the same price regardless of the device you use.  Of all the major carriers this is probably the fairest deal.

ATT is offering 2GB for $25 on the data plan.  Sprint will be offering the same amount of data for $29 or 5GB for $60.  Verizon has the worst plan: $20 for just 1 GB.  Even worse: It's not clear, from the data I've been reading, that when you pay full price at these networks that the tablet will be unlocked for your use on any network.

All those different plans and prices and structures?  Could be quite confusing to consumers.  The total subsidy is relatively smaller than most phones (the iPhone, which is close to $700 at retail goes for $199) and the data plans are far most costly, it seems, on average than phone plans for the same amount of data, or less.  The iPad's unsubsidized approach keeps pricing simple, but at the cost of a higher price.

What should the wireless carriers be doing?  Upping the subsidy I think.  The $399 subsidized price might not be low enough to make buying the Galaxy tab over the iPad a no-brainer.  While the carriers are pushing the Table and the iPad, the better value is a WiFi device with MiFi device (preferably from Virgin).