I don't work for cingular, so I can't say for sure, but I think your reading of the media net terms and conditions are actually correct. You should really check out howardforums - they deal with these kinds of topics in much more depth. If you call customer service and can get through to the data group, they can give you real answers.

I think that it's likely that new consumer friendly data plans will be coming out next year, but that is just speculation on my part.