The mobile world is a-changin’: AT&T has moved to a tiered data system, Verizon is launching its tiered pricing soon, and T-Mobile will unleash a strange hybrid of tiered plans complemented by throttled “unlimited” plans.
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The mobile world is a-changin’: AT&T has moved to a tiered data system, Verizon is launching its tiered pricing soon, and T-Mobile will unleash a strange hybrid of tiered plans complemented by throttled “unlimited” plans. The days of truly unlimited mobile data are coming to a close. Which scheme is worse? Tiered data plans with hard caps or throttling data after a certain number is hit?
On one hand, a lot of consumers — ones that use less data than they think — can save money in a tiered system. A lot of iPhone and iPad users don’t come anywhere close to the 2GB limit that comes with the $25 data plan. (Yes, some of these people are hipster lamers that never download apps.) Data hogs and those that want less restrictions will be happy with T-Mobile’s data rates…until they hit 5GBs of data and the company can throttle down bandwidth.
Both pricing schemes suck and stifle the future of mobile computing. Developers are limited in what they can do with mobile apps because they don’t want to create a brilliant program that consumers will avoid because it hits the Internet for too much data. Consumers won’t use the devices they have as much as they would if data were truly unlimited. Unfortunately, data caps and data throttling are here to stay. Which one do you think is worse?
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