I remember you mentioning the Automatic Tier Scaling idea before and think it is a good idea. Actually, a great idea. The carrier would just need you to choose that option over the existing approach.
I know what you're saying with regard to "rollover data" and you are probably right. It's just that I have so many rollover minutes but I never reduce my plan because there are some months where I actually get close to the limit. Just thinking that that could be the same for data.
I?m in the same boat. I rack up thousands of unused minutes because 450 minutes per month, excluding nights, weekends, and AT&T users (which is pretty much everyone I now due to the iPhone) means I only use minutes when calling some business? and that typically doesn?t happen as I do most everything online.
PS: AT&T should allow you to donate your minutes. It?s a gimmicky idea, but if they allowed these unused minutes to be donated and then, say, used by troops overseas to call family back home or something else it might be something that would do a little good and they could right it off, too.
Oh, how nice it is to live outside the US and not have to deal with the level of control US providers rape you for. I have unlimited data and it costs $25 per month.
I never understood why carriers don't allow tethering or hotspot'ing of phones. You're paying for a service that is capped. There is a data limit set, why do they care how you get to that limit? The only thing I can come up with, is pure greed. The carriers want to force you to pay for an extra service that requires no extra hardware and gives you no extra data allowance.
Right on mjtommlin, you've got it ! Just pure GREED !
I have to agree with bartfat, i think they don’t want you to come close to using it all. Minutes are one thing. SMS would be fine, too, but I think actual data that you could pay less for for several months a year when you have enough saved up could really hurt their bottom line.
My idea for carriers is Automatic Tier Scaling, which is essentially what they do now for their data, to an extent. If you have the 2GB plan and you go over you are charged $10 per 1GB. I think it would give a lot of customers peace of mind if they had price caps for the different data types.
Right now for voice and SMS if you go over your allocation you are charged a per minute or SMS fee. I think they should auto-bump you to the next tier plan if you go over. This way, no customer will get a shocking $1,000 SMS bill, instead they’ll just have the $20 for unlimited. Same voice. Data however is a different beast and I don’t see any carrier going unlimited until the cost of data drops considerably for the carrier.
That is a great idea indeed!
Over here in The Netherlands we have unlimited data usage on T-Mobile, but capped @ 2048/384, for a mere € 10. I'm switching over to a different provider that gives me 7.2/1.4, but capped @ 500MB per month. For € 5 you can double you're dataplan (and pay € 0.05 / MB when going over that)
Phil
PS The biggest downside for me with this switch is loosing VisualVoicemail. Even though to me that is _the_ invention of the century I'd rather have a faster internet than VV. Maybe I'll disable voicemail altogether; don't want to go back to the 80's> "press 1 for..."
Comments
I remember you mentioning the Automatic Tier Scaling idea before and think it is a good idea. Actually, a great idea. The carrier would just need you to choose that option over the existing approach.
I know what you're saying with regard to "rollover data" and you are probably right. It's just that I have so many rollover minutes but I never reduce my plan because there are some months where I actually get close to the limit. Just thinking that that could be the same for data.
I?m in the same boat. I rack up thousands of unused minutes because 450 minutes per month, excluding nights, weekends, and AT&T users (which is pretty much everyone I now due to the iPhone) means I only use minutes when calling some business? and that typically doesn?t happen as I do most everything online.
PS: AT&T should allow you to donate your minutes. It?s a gimmicky idea, but if they allowed these unused minutes to be donated and then, say, used by troops overseas to call family back home or something else it might be something that would do a little good and they could right it off, too.
I never understood why carriers don't allow tethering or hotspot'ing of phones. You're paying for a service that is capped. There is a data limit set, why do they care how you get to that limit? The only thing I can come up with, is pure greed. The carriers want to force you to pay for an extra service that requires no extra hardware and gives you no extra data allowance.
Right on mjtommlin, you've got it ! Just pure GREED !
I have to agree with bartfat, i think they don’t want you to come close to using it all. Minutes are one thing. SMS would be fine, too, but I think actual data that you could pay less for for several months a year when you have enough saved up could really hurt their bottom line.
My idea for carriers is Automatic Tier Scaling, which is essentially what they do now for their data, to an extent. If you have the 2GB plan and you go over you are charged $10 per 1GB. I think it would give a lot of customers peace of mind if they had price caps for the different data types.
Right now for voice and SMS if you go over your allocation you are charged a per minute or SMS fee. I think they should auto-bump you to the next tier plan if you go over. This way, no customer will get a shocking $1,000 SMS bill, instead they’ll just have the $20 for unlimited. Same voice. Data however is a different beast and I don’t see any carrier going unlimited until the cost of data drops considerably for the carrier.
That is a great idea indeed!
Over here in The Netherlands we have unlimited data usage on T-Mobile, but capped @ 2048/384, for a mere € 10. I'm switching over to a different provider that gives me 7.2/1.4, but capped @ 500MB per month. For € 5 you can double you're dataplan (and pay € 0.05 / MB when going over that)
Phil
PS The biggest downside for me with this switch is loosing VisualVoicemail. Even though to me that is _the_ invention of the century I'd rather have a faster internet than VV. Maybe I'll disable voicemail altogether; don't want to go back to the 80's> "press 1 for..."