I know from my experience in testing on AT&T even if you don't have a data plan you can still access the internet with their phones they just charge you literally an arm and a leg for each Kb of data. The Data plan just gives you cheaper rates for your access. My concern was that certain programs will try to access the internet but I wanted to know if you can restrict that to only try to connect when wifi is present. kinda like you can do now with the N8x0 and telling it not to pair with a phone to access the internet. I know you can just not run any apps but that kinda negates the point of having the N900. The apps on the N8x0 still run fine but only access if there is a wifi connection.