The days of unlimited data plans will not be anymore as major U.S. carriers are planning to stop rolling out unlimited data plans and introduce service plans with fixed data usage.
AT&T was the first carrier to do so. In June, the official carrier of the iPhone announced to stop rolling out unlimited data plans as small number of iPhone users consumed large amount of 3G data.
Now, Verizon is following AT&T’s step and is planning to stop selling unlimited data plans to its new customers. However, it will not follow AT&T’s style. Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, said that his company would also reconsider unlimited data for its 4G network if data usage increases significantly.
This change is not unexpected. As more and more people are using smartphones, their mobile Internet usage also changed. According to a research by Nielsen Mobile, in 2009, average data consumption increased from 90MB per month by approximately 230 percent 298 MB in the first quarter of 2010.
People just do not check emails or send messages with their mobile phones. More and more people access social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter with their smartphones. They also watch videos, upload videos, play games and do many other things with mobile phones and all these are causing massive usage of Internet data.
Unlimited data plans makes customers more unhappy and they feel being cheated. On the contrary, Nielsen research opined that usage-based pricing is fair.
Tiered may be the best solution but it would cause airwaves congestion. For the time being, the ideal solution for networks is charging users based on when the data is used.
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