Give Me Unlimited Data Or Give Me Death

If you haven't seen the latest T-Mobile commercial touting its $10 4G data plans, you should. I won't totally give it away, but it's pretty humorous. The spoken line, "Sometimes you just gotta pay more to be ...slower. It makes sense if you don't think about it," is delivered by the AT&T character in a perfectly monotone, yet arrogant way. The 30-second spot got me wondering just what you actually get for $10 from T-Mobile, and what you might get measured in real applications from other data plans. If you've never played the data plan calculator game, it's a fascinating exercise that will scare the daylights out of those of us hooked on unlimited data plans.

Some context is in order. I am a Verizon Wireless customer with an unlimited data plan. I can't claim blind loyalty to Verizon Wireless, and if a better deal came along on a network that has a similar reputation, I'd have no problem bolting to a different carrier. I'm flat-out addicted to the bottomless data package. I got it bad, baby ... and can't imagine having to actually watch my usage. At this point, I am resolute about having an unlimited data plan, especially after looking over what the various carriers' calculator tools say you can expect for your monthly data fee.

Starting with T-Mobile's $10 plan (before murky taxes and fees), you get a (snicker) whopping 200MBytes a month. To the uninitiated, 200 is a potentially big number, so this might be a good deal. That's until you do the analysis using T-Mobile's own data calculator and find that your Hamilton gets you 25 e-mails a day, 20 daily Web page views, and two photos, files or documents sent or received a day. Sure, this is only an estimate, but you'll notice it leaves out downloading of apps, and games, streaming music and Web-based video. Yet as the very pretty T-Mobile spokesgal in the commercial is making her pitch, the featured smartphone spins around jauntily and clearly shows the YouTube control panel. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but this might make the average consumer think that $10 a month will let you actually do some streaming of video. In reality, T-Mobile's same calculator tells us that 5 minutes a day of streaming video adds up to 450MBytes, or two and a half times what your plan allows. Don't dare fall asleep while streaming music, or you'll pay for it big time.

Let's jump to AT&T's calculator and bring up what might be more typical expected daily use on a data plan (at least for me). If I do this sort of activity in a given month ...

... then I've exceeded AT&T's 2GByte DataPro plan and am facing a nickel for every megabyte I go over. Plus taxes and fees, of course. This doesn't take into account tethering or using my device as a wireless hotspot, either.

Then there's the plan I have now. I pay my set amount every month for data (plus taxes and fees), and I just use it without worry. Because it's unlimited. Other than the iPhoners now being courted, new Verizon Wireless customers get a little over 3GBytes for what I pay for unlimited data. I think that stinks. At the top end, Verizon Wireless offers a 10GByte plan for $80 a month (plus taxes and fees). Again--I say that this stinks. Verizon Wireless hooked me, and now they're moving my cheese. The day when I need a new phone, I would imagine my good thing will come to an end and I'll need to start monitoring my traffic to not go broke. Carumba.Spare me the blather about how much it costs to upgrade networks. Sprint Nextel is about to tack on a $10-per-smartphone premium to cover upgrade costs to 4G. I say keep your 4G. LTE is already an overused buzzword, and when I'm streaming Pandora on a bike ride out in cow country, I could care less that the network might be a a bit faster if only we all paid more. I'll gladly trade hyped-up performance claims and sexy ad campaigns for unlimited data and reasonable performance at a realistic price. And just because I cut the cord for the landline at home doesn't mean that some mobile carrier is entitled to the money I used to spend on it.
 
From the user perspective, trying to watch your utilization is a losing battle, and it is my conjecture that most users at the end of the day could care less about whether they are connected to 3G, 4G, LTE or some Wi-Fi offload. They just want to connect, do their thing without needing a spreadsheet to track their activities lest they exceed the capacity of their package, and not have to choose between groceries or a data plan. Throttle my speeds a bit. Charge more for apps and take a bigger cut to bulk up the network. Lose a VP or two and reduce executive bonuses, and stop flooding me with paper junk mail. Show some creativity in keeping unlimited plans available and reasonably affordable. These devices are not telephones; they are powerful computers that just happen to make calls. Charge us more for voice calls if you'd like, but I gotta have unlimited data on my smartphone.