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When Are Mobile Broadband Prices Going To Drop?

I pay $60 per month for my wireless broadband card with Verizon Wireless. Sprint and AT&T charge similar rates. Are the carriers keeping prices high to deter people from signing up, or is $60 for 5 GB of wireless data the fair market price?

Wireless broadband has become an essential tool for me. I rely on it nearly every day to get my work done (and am using it right now). I am sure I am not the only one. Thousands of enterprise users across the country and around the world make use of wireless broadband day in and day out.

I've been waiting and waiting for the price of this service to drop. It started at $80 per month with most of the carriers several years ago. The carriers then dropped the monthly access fees to $60. But that was two years ago. When is it going to drop further to $50 or $40 per month? Analysts had predicted that the $40 price point would become the base price of this service. It hasn't happened yet.

I've been monitoring my usage, and it's steadily gone up over the last year. I started out using just under 1 GB per month, but I've slowly crept up to the 5 GB per month limit that my Verizon plan offers. (I swear I don't spend all day on YouTube. Honest.) Verizon and AT&T cap data usage at 5 GB per month. If you go over that, you pay by the MB. Sprint offers a truly unlimited plan.

Speaking of unlimited...

In the wake of the carriers' truly unlimited voice plans, I was hoping to see a similar program set up for wireless broadband. Or at least a price drop. What's the holdup? Are users such as myself taxing the network too much? Do I take up too much capacity, or download/upload too much? Is there a limit as to how much the network can handle from this type of usage? Or are we the ones who are helping the carriers to pay off their multibillion dollar investments in building out the networks to begin with?

I haven't been able to dig up an answer yet. I'll let you know when/if I do.

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