Back in June, AT&T did a way with their unlimited data plan and decided to offer tiered data plans, one with a cap of 200MB and another with a 2GB cap. The question is now, will the other carriers follow suit?
Recently, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, stated that:
We’re not ruling out metered pricing,”
“Tiered pricing is something we look at.”
Sprint could use the fact that both AT&T and Verizon will be on tiered data plans and wait for Verizon to set their price and then offer something competitive. But even with this being the new standard, Sprint has a truly unlimited data plan with no caps, no hidden fees, and is still a bargain, even with the additional $10 fee for 4G phones. Sprint at the moment has not made a decision either way and are simply evaluating things; Verizon has confirmed that they will in fact be offering a tiered data plan.
In four to six months, Verizon plans on rolling out their tiered data plan, although no comment has been made as to pricing and data caps. Verizon most likely decided to adopt AT&T’s data policy because they will start rolling out their 4G network, Long-Term Evolution (LTE) soon.
People continue to speculate over Apple coming to Verizon but have stated, “We would love to carry it, but we have to earn it.” However, Verizon cannot continue waiting for that day to happen so they have been bringing some real competitors into the market, including the Motorola Droid.
With the inevitable move of the top 3 carriers to tiered data plans, how will this change how you surf the Internet?