Take Hong Kong’s CSL, for example. The Telstra-backed firm introduced speed-based data plans when it debuted its all-IP 900 network in March 2009.
The firm says most Next G subscribers take either its 3.6Mbps or 7.2Mbps plans, with business customers skewed towards the 21Mbps service.
“We have set a new structure in Hong Kong with speed-based pricing which our competitors have copied,” a CSL spokesperson told telecomasia.net.
And so finally, US operators are about to join their counterparts all around the world which are backing away from unlimited data plans as networks are strained under the heavy pressures that iPhones and other smartphones are putting on them.
“Unlimited plans went through a brief heyday until the problems with the i-Phone and people gobbling up huge volumes of data downloading video to their mobiles and clogging up the networks led to the imposition of more restrictive capped plans,” says Nick Ingelbrecht, research director consumer services, at Gartner.
But he says that “unlimited plans (conditions apply) are back again with the i-Pad and will remain a feature for high usage customers.”
Now that’s worrisome.
Has the industry not learned anything from the iPhone data explosion?