End Is Nigh For Unlimited Data PlansEnd Is Nigh For Unlimited Data Plans

Unlimited data plans for your phone are soon to be a thing of the past. First AT&T was talking about going to a tiered data plan and that was shortly followed by Verizon. Now T-Mobile has laid out their pricing plans for limited data. Only Sprint has yet to disclose their plans in this area.Since data plans have been available in the US, most carriers had low limit inexpensive plans, like $10 for 2MB of data for light email usage, but they also had a more expensive unlimited plan. Those prices have ranged from $19.99 all the way to $50 or more if you needed access to things like VPN connections or Blackberry servers, because we all know it is more expensive for the carrier to transmit business data instead of personal data.

AT&T is switching to two plans going forward. For $15, you get 200MB of data, which really won't get you much. For $25 though you can get 2GB of data, which should get you through all of your email and web browsing needs on your device, just be careful if you tether your laptop to your phone.

Verizon's plans haven't yet been announced, but they are coming. When asked what the plans would look like, Verizon's CEO Ivan Seidenberg said "we're not sure we agree yet with how they valued the data" speaking about AT&T's plans.

The latest news is T-Mobile is switching to tiered plans as well, at least for their prepaid customers. For $7, you can use the phone's data for a week and consume as much as 100MB. $30 gets you a full month of usage, up to 300MB and for $50, that same month allows you up to 1GB of data.

I'd be shocked if twelve months from now there were any unlimited data plans on any major US carrier. Five years ago, it was almost impossible for a phone to consume a lot of data, partially due to the phone's limitations and partially due to the 2G network speeds. Today though, a user can blow through several gigabytes without trying too hard, and the networks aren't designed to handle that. If power users want to continue consuming data in those amounts, they will pay for it in overage fees.