Unlimited Cell Phone Usage Plans About to Go Bye-Bye?

Service providers have unsuccessfully been trying to move customers away from All You Can Eat network access plans. Instead, they want power users to pay a bit more than those who only occasionally download data. AT&T is the latest vendor trying to prod its customers in that direction.The service provider announced two new pricing plans. For $15 a month, customers can purchase DataPlus, which allows them to download 200M bytes of data traffic a month or for an additional $10, they can use DataPro, which delivers 2G bytes of information.

The services are geared mainly to the consumer market but may create a ripple effect among small and medium businesses. As transmissions have shifted from simple textual data to more multimedia exchanges, the volume of information flowing over service provider networks has been on the rise. In addition, carriers have been engaged in various bundling and price cutting moves in order to grow their customer bases. Now, they need to find ways to make their services more profitable, and tiered services have that potential. If individuals transmit more information than anticipated, then their bills could rise dramatically.

However, there has been a great deal of blowback with these services. Various consumer advocacy groups have petitioned the federal government to outlaw the practice. In fact, the feds have tried to put the kibosh on Comcasts plans to offer tiered pricing, a scenario that continues to unfold.

The volatile landscape could hurt small and medium businesses. Many of them have recently (or are planning to) incorporate cellular communications into their businesses. If the pricing models for these services changes dramatically, they may not realize as many business benefits as anticipated. With the cell phone market now in a state of flux, small and medium companies need to put safeguards (such as long term contracts) in place in order to ensure that they are not adversely impacted as the market evolves.