That little IB $10 data fee, if one does not have $30 in commissions in a month, has a $1000 pain trigger to your account at IB just waiting for you all, now that its active. If you have a master account and subaccounts then that min $30 in commissions can be much larger -- 9 accounts $90 min in commissions, trigger 1 is ready.
If you have dormant sub accounts (no money in them) then just unsubscribe data for them.
If you run out money in an active account (not even $10 spare) such that you cant get real time data then you can still close positions at market and use free 20 minute delayed data if needed.
Real time data is completely optional at IB. You can still submit orders without it.
I wonder if TD will start charging soon. They must be in the same position as IB.You can get free futures data with a TDAmeritrade account and trade without data at IB. Not that I would recommend that, not having the software integrated with the data (and TWS tends to be annoying when you try to trade without data) can be a cost on it self