Verizon Wireless is expected to stop selling unlimited data plans to new customers within six months, says the WSJ, instead opting to offer two plans with monthly bandwidth caps.
In June, AT&T made a similar move, dropping the unlimited 3G data plan while starting to offer three capped plans.
Earlier in the week, Sprint said the company may have to cap unlimited 4G data plans, especially if usage increases exponentially.
For the Q1 2010, average smartphone data consumption jumped to 298MB per month, from an average of 90MB during the period in 2009.
Nielsen research recently concluded that usage-based pricing models are actually fair, as the average smartphone user does not need unlimited. After reviewing 60,000 phone bills, Nielsen says the top 6 percent of smartphone data users use 49 percent of all bandwidth. That leaves the other 94 percent of users for the other half.
It is unclear what the new tiered plans will look like, but most expect them to be similar to AT&T’s, which cost $15 for 200MB and $25 for 2GB. Unlimited plans currently cost $30.
Result for: pricing models
The large Swedish-Finnish-based telecom operator TeliaSonera has announced that it has struck a deal with Apple to bring the popular iPhone to Northern European markets.
In its press release the company says “later this year” the carrier will begin selling the phone in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
When asked for more details, the carrier refused any more comment, and so there are no pricing models available as of yet.
Over the past month (see related news below), Apple has been striking deals with various carriers to bring the iPhone worldwide, hitting every continent minus Antarctica.
Orange has signed up to sell the phone in at least 12 markets in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Vodafone is set to sell the phone in 10 countries including markets in South Africa and Australia. other providers have also inked deals to sell the phone in Singapore, India, the Philippines. Notably however, deals have fallen apart in the giant markets of Japan and China, but many still feel there is a chance they can be signed by the end of 2008.
