BTW....
T-Mobile Kills Unlimited Data for Smartphones
New Smartphone Pricing Features Caps, Throttling
by Karl Bode Monday 23-May-2011 tags: business · wireless · alternatives · bandwidth · consumers · wireless
As leaks had suggested, T-Mobile today officially announced a significant shake up to their smartphone data pricing -- including the death of unlimited data. Gone is the unlimited $30 option for smartphone users, replaced with a variety of capped tiers, ranging from $10 a month for 200MB of data usage, all the way up to $60 a month for 10 GB of usage. Unlike T-Mobile's future owner AT&T however, the company won't be imposing per byte overages. Users who reach their monthly allotment instead find their connection throttled back for the remainder of their billing cycle. These are the new options for smartphone users according to T-Mobile's new press release:
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• $10 for 200 MB per month
• $20 for 2 GB per month
• $30 for 5 GB per month
• $60 for 10 GB per month
The move follows on the heels of AT&T's decision to replace unlimited data with low caps and overages up to $10 per gigabyte last June. With T-Mobile's looming acquisition by AT&T, it's only a matter of time before T-Mobile's throttling is replaced with AT&T-style overages. Verizon this week confirmed that sometime this summer they'll also be completely ditching unlimited data for smartphones, replacing it with a variety of new tiers based on speed, consumption, or both.
That leaves Sprint as the last truly unlimited data holdout among the four major carriers, and the company has made it clear that they haven't ruled out the option of also dumping unlimited entirely.
Verizon Wireless: Say Bye Bye to Unlimited Data
Tiered Pricing, Family Data Buckets Coming This Summer
by Karl Bode Friday 20-May-2011 tags: prices · business · bandwidth · consumers · Verizon Wireless Broadband
Over the last few years, Verizon's been repeatedly tinkering and experimenting with their wireless data pricing -- trying to figure out what customers are willing to pay. They've also hinted dozens of times that when LTE finally launched for smartphones, they'd be tinkering with new, more usage-based pricing options. When Verizon recently finally got the iPhone, they kept unlimited data pricing, but stated the move was only temporary, the company clearly trying to lure AT&T customers away and get them under long-term contract.
This week finds Verizon once again stating that unlimited data will die off this summer, replaced by more tiered pricing potentially based on both speed and usage. On the positive side, Verizon's also planning to embrace "bucket 'o bytes" family plans, where like voice minutes -- a family can pull from a set pool of data usage. Details however remain a bit sketchy:
After this change the company will look to soften the blow by offering more options such as family plans for data services, Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo told the Reuters Global Technology Summit. While families can share a bucket of minutes for phone calls today, each family member with a smartphone has to pay $30 per month each for data services. If they own a tablet computer they pay another separate data fee.
Verizon's LTE pricing so far hasn't been particularly innovative, and with overages up to $10 per gigabyte it hasn't been particularly economical, either. The shift toward family plans suggests some creative thinking, but the quality of the new pricing will depend, as usual, on how low the caps are and how steep the per-byte overages will be.