Slashdot Log In
Unlimited Wireless Plans Coming
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Mar 14, 2007 06:51 AM
from the talk-much-surf-often-text-lots dept.
from the talk-much-surf-often-text-lots dept.
An anonymous reader tells us about a BusinessWeek story claiming that in a few years most wireless plans will be unlimited. And pretty costly: unlimited cell calling, SMS, and data for on the order of $115 - $150 a month. Sprint is conducting a trial of such an offering in San Francisco, with the intent of rolling it out nationwide, and other carriers are said to be sure to follow suit. An interesting claim in the article is that in 5 years time, 40% of the US population will be untethered from landlines and using their cell numbers exclusively (vs. 15% now).
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Yawn... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Wouldn't be surprised if other providers around the world have more competitive rates.
This is hardly news.
This means limited exit points from the Matrix! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yawn... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Cool. I just heard that MetroPCS [metropcs.com] has all the mentioned features for a flat $60/month. And from the looks of plans page [metropcs.com], that includes taxes.
and how many people will wreck their finances this (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing, just a few years ago most people didn't think they had to have a cell phone, let alone use it all the time. Yet these days I know some families that have gone over the top with them.
Sorry, but having a $50 to $100+ new monthy expense is not my idea of progress. What is truly amazing is that the Cell providers marketing worked so well. Pay by the minute? I guess unlimited coming so expensive makes sense because people will convince themselves they are getting a deal.
We have unlimited local calling on some plans in the Atlanta area and a few give you unlimited national calling too. These plans are regularly less than $50 a month but the only hang up is limited local coverage even though they piggy back on another network.
Now unlimited high speed data "might" be worth it. Might be because for the most part people don't need it. Businesses and self employed might need it. Say going to a client and making a presentation and you need stuff from outside at the last minute. Regular people? What, watch YouTube on my phone? I guess some will.
$100+ a month for voice - not for me, I can put that $100 to far better use. Kill yourself with monthlies and keep moaning about how you don't get paid enough - I won't
Re:and how many people will wreck their finances t (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:and how many people will wreck their finances t (Score:5, Funny)
Re:and how many people will wreck their finances t (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For some people, accumulating wealth isn't their reason for existence.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Thanks for the laugh. I needed it.
What country are you from? This is America. We don't do proper financial planning or even basic financial planning. Financial planning means fig
Ok, but what about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, but what about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Since I would only use the phone for emergencies there's no way I'll
Re:Ok, but what about... Emergencies (Score:5, Informative)
For true emergencies, any working cell phone can still make 911 calls (or cellular version thereof *999 - whatever). That's free - no carrier, no bills. In many areas, the local police or cell phone stores will take donated old cell phones to give to local women's shelters and to shut-ins for just this purpose.
Look around the house, find a phone from a provider you no longer use or whatever, and charge it up and give it to her. The biggest hassle is usually the battery - those lithium batteries have a 'shelf-life' of about three years before they can hold no charge at all. They hold their existing charge quite nicely on the shelf, but their capacity is what goes down.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is you can't find any plans cheaper than $39.99 these days and those usually end up being $60 after taxes and other "fees".
I never have even come close to using
health concerns? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that we're all the Guinea pigs of tomorrow.
Soon enough we'll start comparing the cellular industry with
Re:health concerns? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course not. That is why I, like many slashdoters, avoid that big bright producer of electromagnetic radiation in the sky whenever possible. As a side benefit, my pasty white completion will soon be white enough for me to qualify as a white body and as such, EM radiation will just bounce happily away from me.
Note: Intended as a joke and I haven't had a physics class since High School so
Re: (Score:2)
Plus it's non-ionizing radiation anyway. The most a radio wave can do tis
Re: (Score:2)
Don't you see how relevant that is to this story though?! With unlimited plans, I'll be able to finally afford that fifth cell phone I've been looking at! I'
Just like ISPs! (Score:4, Interesting)
"Our customers have unlimited bandwidth, but some are more unlimited than others!"
Now that we know how ISPs have chosen to implement 'unlimited', we should expect similar from the cellular companies. It won't be long before they've all merged together anyway.
The FDA requires food products that contain no actual cheese to refrain from using the word 'cheese' in their names. And so you get things like 'cheez whiz'. I say we require ISPs and Cellular companies to do likewise. Then we'll know when our plan is truly 'unlimited' versus merely 'unlymited'. :)
the 2003 power outage (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They've got huge banks of 48 volt lead-acid or better batteries that hold 48-72 hours of juice
minimum for the entire system at "normal" usage levels. If the mob
Unlimited? Has to be MUCH cheaper. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlimited wireless in Finland, starting from 57e (Score:4, Informative)
Repeat after me... (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that we are attempting to create a public utility from what started as a luxury service. We simply want to be able to talk on the phon
So what? (Score:2)
Let's talk about tethers (Score:5, Insightful)
Tethers need not be visible. In this case people will simply be exchanging a small one for a big, thick, heavy one. Anyone remember ye good ole days, when you had to purchase phone hardware exclusively from Ma Bell? We went through that crap once before the government stepped in and forced them to allow us options. Now we're going through the same thing again with the cellular industry - except its worse. We've got phones that should be capable of doing all sorts of fantastic things, but can't (or won't) unless we buy our software from the carrier, pay the bandwidth fees to them to transfer it (because we can't just plug our phone into our PC and transfer software that way), then continue paying subscription and bandwidth fees if we want to continue using our software. We have to sign 2 year contracts just to get a phone at a reasonable price. They offer insurance that, after 6 months, isn't worthwhile because the cost of the phone has plummeted, and it's cheaper to buy a phone from a 3rd party than pay just the deductible.
Right now I think we're entering a phase in which carriers are not really trying to compete with one another. Have you ever noticed how you can go into a town and every gas station's prices are within a couple cents of one another, and go down the road a few miles and all those stations prices are 5% cheaper? That's because they aren't competing - they're consorting together (indirectly) in their micro-market to set the prices they want. Well, that's what's going on with cell market. You shouldn't have to pay $100 a month network fees for a single cell phone just for decent service, and unfortunately that's where we stand today. Enough people have been bit by an over-minute cell phone bill, with obscene per-minute rates, that the carriers can now extort people to pay a much higher flat monthly fee simply to avoid the risk.
Dan East
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But we do pay that, so they will charge it. [wikipedia.org]
It's wrong to compare the cellular industry to a monopoly. Think o
I pay (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who needs unlimited? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
6 am to 9 pm is 15 hours, or 900 minutes. Multiply by 5 weekdays and you get 4500. Multiply by 4 weeks (lets calculate for February just for the sake of simpl
Re: (Score:2)
Unlimited "Broadband"? (Score:2)
Isn't this just marketing? The last I'd read, mobile data access in the US could hardly be called "broadband".
Quality of cell phone connections... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I was going to say - my Sidekick II gets unlimited data and 300 minutes + free weekends already for $50/month.
And I could swear I heard a cingular commercial on the radio proclaiming unlimited minutes (nothing about data, though) for $50/month.
~Wx
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most companies rent the land, a much much much more logical choice for many reasons. Granted not everyone wants a cell tower on their property so it does cost a decent amount to rent the land.
Re:up the quality (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I'm old, and when I was a kid I used to watch "Green Acres." One of the running gags was that by moving to the country this lawyer from New York had to go outside and climb a telephone pole to receive a call. I guess it seemed pretty outrageous at the time.
40 years later I see people standing outside of buildings all the time, in all kinds of weather, trying to improve their mobile phone reception.
Re: (Score:2)