Reconsidering your Cell Phone Use when Data Plans Turn Limited

Reconsidering your Cell Phone Use when Data Plans Turn Limited

Does it really make sense to give up an unlimited data plan for your smart phone? Typically, on a service like T-Mobile or AT&T, an unlimited data plan costs you $30 a month; voluntarily giving that up (and agreeing that you'll never get to go back again) lowers your monthly subscription to $15. The new system is supposed to help people save money - $15 a month. The thinking is that with most people, the kind of cell phone use they wish for doesn't really need "unlimited" data allowances. More than 30% of all cell phone use of data amounts to no more than 200MB per month. Cell phone carriers argue that people shouldn't have to pay an extra $15 a month for cell phone use they never see.

Now that makes a lot of sense for today. Most people really aren't used to doing anything with the browsers on their smartphones other than taking a quick look at a map or looking at their e-mail. If you give up your unlimited plan today though, you do have to remember that there is no going back. People are only just beginning to learn to use their smartphones for all kinds of data-intensive purposes. What will it be like four or five years down the line when you really see that to download videos, play games and all that stuff really does grow on you? Without an unlimited plan, every time you download an episode from a TV show, you quickly exhaust your full month's data allowance. Past that, you'll have to keep paying them $10 for a new bucket of data - that you will exhaust very quickly again anyway if you're learning to like watching TV shows on your phone.

Certainly, the lower data prices are already drawing new customers. Ever since AT&T dropped its unlimited plan and offered cheaper data plans for $15, they've got millions of new customers for their smartphones. Is an unlimited plan the best idea? Or is a limited lower-priced plan a good deal for your money?

As you just saw, a single episode of a TV show can quickly wipe out your $15 monthly allowance. In six hours, streaming music continuously can do the same. If you stream video for four hours, you'll blow your way through the higher allowance of 2GB that you buy for $25. And then of course, there's the whole thing where you browse the web for more wholesome cell phone use. And that's not even including how videos on YouTube are going HD and 3-D (soon). If you want to make do on a cheaper limited plan, make sure that you download stuff instead of streaming everything. Streaming is something that's better left to a home computer with a true unlimited connection.

If you actually don't use your smartphone for anything other than web browsing and e-mail, you probably won't mind the 200MB. If you have Google Tools turned on on your Android smartphone though, those tools are always reaching out to update themselves. You could easily use up about 200MB just updating everything. You still could make do with a smaller data plan if you use your phone's WiFi connection in a hotspot instead.

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