Most mobile service providers currently offer unlimited data plans. As you have probably heard, most of them are also planning to due away with their unlimited data plans in the near future.
AT&T has already changed over to a two-tiered pricing system offering a 200MB plan for $15/month and a 2GB plan for $25/month.
Verizon is also going to turn away from unlimited data plans very shortly.
I have heard a lot of consumers complain about phone companies charging by the amount of data used instead of charging a fixed fee for unlimited data. What most people don’t understand is that the new pricing options might actually help consumers save money instead of costing them more money. According to Mobile.Blorg, the average cellphone user uses between 200MB and 500MB of data each month.
I currently pay $30 for an unlimited data plan with Verizon but if I switched over to a 200GB data plan for $25/month I would save $60 a year and have more than enough bandwidth to surf the web as I usually do on my mobile phone.
When you actually think about the current pricing plans that cellular service companies offer, they don’t make any sense at all. The current plans are equivalent to paying a fixed fee for electricity every month regardless of the amount of electricity you’re actually using.
By offering unlimited plans, cell phones companies overcharge the average user while undercharging the power users that, because of their excessive use of mobile data bandwidth, end up driving the cost of data usage up for everyone. With the new, limited, plans those power users will have to pay a fee that much more closely reflects the amount of data they’re actually using. If they pay more, those who don’t use much data at all, pay less.
As these plans become more common companies will come out with multiple tiers to support the different usage levels of their users. As of right now 2GB can be used up without too much difficulty by streaming videos. Hopefully a “power-user” plan will be available from mobile service providers that would allow subscribers to use 10GB or more on a monthly basis without incurring extra charges
Call up your cell phone company and ask them how much data you use a month. That will give you a good idea of how much you will be paying once all the cell phone companies follow in AT&T’s footsteps and change their data pricing plans.
Don’t worry! You’re probably going to end up paying less for your mobile data- not more!
