Andre Yoskowitz
26 Sep 2010 16:01
Verizon Wireless is expected to stop selling unlimited data plans to new customers within six months, says the WSJ, instead opting to offer two plans with monthly bandwidth caps.
In June, AT&T made a similar move, dropping the unlimited 3G data plan while starting to offer three capped plans.
Earlier in the week, Sprint said the company may have to cap unlimited 4G data plans, especially if usage increases exponentially.
For the Q1 2010, average smartphone data consumption jumped to 298MB per month, from an average of 90MB during the period in 2009.
Nielsen research recently concluded that usage-based pricing models are actually fair, as the average smartphone user does not need unlimited. After reviewing 60,000 phone bills, Nielsen says the top 6 percent of smartphone data users use 49 percent of all bandwidth. That leaves the other 94 percent of users for the other half.
It is unclear what the new tiered plans will look like, but most expect them to be similar to AT&T's, which cost $15 for 200MB and $25 for 2GB. Unlimited plans currently cost $30.