Some folks who are currently monkeying around with a beta version of the next iOS operating system for iPhones say they are getting a message from AT&T that seems to imply that the Death Star will be charging more — or at least separately — for subscribers who want to use the iPhone’s FaceTime chat over a cellular connection.

The editors at 9to5mac.com were the first ones to notice that, when trying to use iOS 6’s FaceTime over Cellular feature on an AT&T iPhone, a message popped up stating: “To enable FaceTime over cellular on this account, contact AT&T…”

A test on a Verizon device didn’t bring up any such message, which seemed to imply that AT&T will charge a separate fee for using the FaceTime feature.

But all the company will say is, “We’re working closely with Apple on the new developer build of iOS6 and we’ll share more information with our customers as it becomes available.”

This would fall in line with AT&T’s stated regret that it ever offered unlimited data plans to customers in the first place. Since it stopped offering unlimited data, AT&T has been looking into other ways, like having app developers foot the bill for some of the data chewed up by users, to push data costs off on others.

AT&T appears set to control and charge for FaceTime over Cellular in iOS 6 [9to5mac.com]

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