DataMan for iPhone is a utility that allows you to monitor your data usage in a few unique ways that a lot of other data utilities don’t. The app not only monitors your network usage, it will also monitors your wifi usage. You can view your usage on a map and it will break out where you are using data and what kind of data you were using. For people who want to save a bit of cash and use a lower data plan, this may be an app you would want to check out.

iTunes Link

When you first launch DataMan, you’ll notice the app is dead simple to navigate through. The layout’s pretty intuitive and easy to use. You can enter your usage period (billing cycle) as well. For me, my usage cycle starts over on the 4th of every month, so I set it to begin on the 4th and end on the 3rd of the following month.

DataMan also allows you to set alerts for different usage levels as well. This way, the app will send you a push notification when you reach certain data usage levels. I also really like the map feature. It will link together all the different places you’ve used data. Not exactly a “needed” feature for most, but it’s certainly neat to see the trends and where you browse the most. The data will not only break up into a total amount, but into how much you’re using each day of the month. As you can see in the screenshot above, it also lets you know how much of that data is downstream and how much is upstream.

Some of my friends or family members are on 200MB plans with the iPhones and like to monitor their usage pretty closely. While AT&T allows you to check your data via text, their numbers are always a day to two days behind. Since DataMan monitors data as you use it, you’ll always know exactly how much data you’ve used in real time.

Pros

• Layout is easy to figure out
• Presents you with more information than most data monitoring applications
• Mapping data usage is a creative way to view your usage

Cons

• Sometimes push notifications don’t always come through, hopefully this is a bug that will be worked out in an update

PCWorld has an article up saying that, based on AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega’s comments during yesterday’s CTIA Keynote, AT&T was laying the groundwork to “manage” or “throttle” iPhone users’ data.

de la Vega did use most of his time, after announcing VoIP over 3G for iPhone, to rail against the FCC‘s net neutrality push. He claimed a small percentage of heavy data users (i.e. iPhone users) were hogging most of the limited data resources, and “crowding” out regular (i.e. non-iPhone users). He also stated that AT&T would need to “manage” the network so that the few couldn’t crowd out the many.

This is what makes PC World think:

In the face of exploding data service demand and scarce wireless spectrum, does AT&T intend to quietly begin rationing the data usage of bandwidth hogs like the iPhone? Will AT&T begin to quietly “manage” the duration and speed of my 3G connection based on how much data I’ve used in a given day, or on the type of content or services I’m using the bandwidth to access?

Aside from “AT&T should spend some of their billions making a better network and getting 4G here faster”, it’s hard to argue that the iPhone hits the network like a freight train, and when you multiply that by tens of millions of users, it’s a huge load (something RIM emphasizes to carriers when pitching their highly compressed, proxied BlackBerrys as “better network citizens”).

That’s an immediate problem for the iPhone on AT&T, but arguably if another device with a great internet experience ever succeeds enough to reach those numbers on a single network — Android or webOS for example — it will become an everyone problem everywhere.

Dieter Bohn, editor-in-chief of our Smartphone Expert network was live at AT&T’s keynote yesterday, but his takeaway was a little different:

It’s pretty clear from [de la Vega's] complaints about the top percentage that he would want tiered data prices instead of unlimited for everybody. That seems more likely what was meant by ‘managing.’ I think that rather than rationing, ATT would just like to charge that top percentage more.

What do you think? Do you want AT&T “managing” your iPhone usage? Does it sound fair to charge heavy users more for that heavy use?