Here goes the long awaited data plan changes……
Carriers have been warning for awhile now that the ALL YOU CAN EAT plans are going away and here we go. ATT announced recently that it is doing away with the UNL plans and will set the new top level of KB usage at 2GB. Currently, according to AT&T, 65% of their smartphone customers use less than 200MB per month — although this is well below what we see from the average enterprise customer. Additionally, AT&T says that only 2% of the users use over 2GB per month.
While this does not seem to be big news for the majority of the users right now, beware…it will be soon. With the rollout of 4G speeds, the GB usage will be rolling over the networks faster than white on rice.
With all the new 4G applications moving at faster speed and ease, data plan maintenance will soon become an optimization challenge, I mean opportunity. Like voice in the old days of unlimited talking in a local area, data has now expanded areas to national and internationally unlimited plans. The carriers will need to limit data usage in order for their networks to support the traffic and will also need to increase revenue to expand networks to handle the increased data utilization. This means creative plans for the enterprise to figure out on their own to keep up with the changing dynamics of both the plans and the usage.
So, pay attention to the plans as they roll out, pay attention to the carriers as they roll out creative technologies, and for goodness sake, pay attention to grandfathered unlimited plans and associated discounts to take advantage of these rates while they still exist. Protect your wireless rights! Right data truncated plan, right data price for the associated KB and the right service and price result for the enterprise!