How long can mobile operators institute data usage caps?

Next week, CBS Sports will be promoting the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament by informing their viewers on TV that they can freely watch the tournament whereever they have an Internet connection at CBSSports.com. In turn, millions of viewers will watch the games on their computers and tune into the live game feeds.

Major League Baseball is selling selling subscriptions for fans to watch their favorite teams' games out of market over MLB.com.

Not once will you see any disclaimer that if you view the events on your computer, you could be subject to using 200MB of data for each hour you watch the games.

This can be an expensive proposition for Verizon, AT&T and Sprint subscribers to their 3G wireless products.

Consumers have been trained over the years to access the Internet for a certain price for unlimited service. As I agree, 5GB is a large amount of data usage for a month of service. 98% of subscribers do not go over the threshhold of 5GB of data usage, but as more and more opportunities come over the Internet to stream video for events and activities, those numbers will increase.

The average consumer does not know how much data they are utilizing. When they purchase a wireless telephone, they know how many minutes they are consuming, up to the second but data usage is very difficult to track. The wireless companies provide a data usage button on their access managers, however the data usage statistics are only accurate up to the previous day and do not reflect realtime statistics of usage.

I think the wireless companies have gotten themselves into this mess with very poor policy decisions made by people who do not know what they are doing. If they do not want consumers to surf the net the way they did before they purchased a 3G data card, why are they even selling data cards? Why are they allowing companies like Netgear, Kyocera, D-Link, Cradlepoint and Linksys to build 3G wireless routers so customers can share their 3G connection and further tack on the bandwidth?

I believe the plantiff in this case has an excellent chance of defeating the companies. CONTRACT OR NO CONTRACT, NO CONSUMER SHOULD EVER RECEIVE A BILL OF THOUSANDS OR EVEN HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS WHEN THEY ARE EXPECTING TO PAY $59.99 A MONTH WHICH IS ALREADY AN INFLATED PRICE TO SURF THE INTERNET! Especially without a warning of some kind.

Personally, I sell these products and I warn each and every customer about the usage threshhold. However, customers will be customers and most do not even understand how to properly use their computer and with the low prices for netbooks, many are getting their first computer and since the prices are so low, they are purchasing these computers for each member of their family, along with a wireless router to share the connection.

When events like March Madness, MLB and even things on Youtube, Facebook and MySpace show up, this attracts the masses. They do not realize there is a "pay to play" consequence involved as they are more inclined to use their computer the same way they watch TV because that is why they are paying the cable or satelite companies the high fees in the first place.

$59.99 a month for 3G wireless Internet access is high enough. When you are expecting a $59.99 bill in the mail and it is hundreds, if not thousands of dollars more, WITHOUT WARNING, there is a problem and what do the wireless companies expect to happen, as they are selling these products to consumers and are promoting the products on billboards and commercials during prime viewing time on TV?

These policies were put into place by these companies by executives who really do not know what they are doing. These are voice policies for data usage and they are wrong. This happened in the CDPD (cellular digital packet data)era in the mid to late 1990's and now it is happening again today. IT NEEDS TO STOP SINCE MAINSTREAM CONSUMERS DID NOT PURCHASE CDPD BUT THEY ARE PROMOTED TO AND ARE PURCHASING 3G AND LATER 4G!

Say what you all want that a consumer signed a contract and should be aware of the data threshhold of 5GB and 25-50 cents per MB overrage charge. The average consumer does not know how much data they are using and the wireless companies are not making it easy for them to know this. ATTORNIES WILL HAVE A FIELD DAY WITH THIS, POLICY OR NO POLICY, CONTRACT OR NO CONTRACT.

To make the plantiff's case stronger, you can go to 100 people selling this product and 100 people will sell the product in different ways, telling customers different things. The disclosure aspect is abysmal and leaves things wide open for litigation. When consumers get screwed, the public will hear about it.

The solution to this mess is simple. The wireless companies created it and need to decide whether they should continue to sell these exclusive wireless data products at all if they are so concerned that 2-5 percent of their users will damage the entire industry by watching streaming video and using more bandwidth than the other 95 percent. Should they wait for the 4G products to come out like LTE or WiMax? Will LTE or WiMax be any better? If not, they are setting themselves up for failure by selling faster speeds and limiting the output to consumers.

As more and more consumers are able to afford computers and have wireless mobile broadband access, this problem will become more and more commonplace.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the last you are going hear of this. The best will be yet to come! I promise you!

Good article. Why are we even having this debate? Is our country retarded? America is being bamboozled by having something that was free (analog tv, etc.) turned into something extremely expensive. The privatization of our Govt. is hell on earth for 95% of people.

This tells that it is a time for mobile application world to create an application that downloaded on users handset and do usage monitoring instead of relying/forcing Service providers.

Lynette,

I found this editorial to be a fairly reasonable presentation of the issue, with a few quibbles.

1) I do agree that sending a customer a bill with thousands of dollars in overage charges (or any amount of overage charges for that matter) without fair warning about the constraints of the contracted service is unconscionable. And I'm sure that if that is what happened in the case you reference above, the court will deal with it appropriately.

2) While it is true that all the major cellular service providers are distributing their wireless broadband delivery service with some kind of necessary cap and restriction of use and/or overage charges (due to the capacity issues you cited), it is not true that all have the same policy about billing and enforcement. At lease one of the major players has a progressive policy where the customer can call in and have a conversation in which the plan and policy are reiterated, the customer is educated on how to monitor their usage, credits are issued and the customer actually has a cap on overage liability for their second occurrence.

3) I do believe that service providers should not be content with having the necessary restrictions on data capacity stated only in the fine print on the contract. Especially in the sales branch of each company, the limits and overage rate attendant with each plan should be freely disclosed up front to the consumer. Open disclosure should be and I believe is the goal of each company operating in this industry, but whether that is that actual practice day in and day out on the front lines of stores and indirect marketing can be questioned.

4) The American public can hold themselves responsible in part for some of the communication failures inherent in this problem. While cellular providers struggle to present a needed and wanted product within the limits of the current technology's capacity, the public has no patience for or interest in hearing why they cannot have unlimited wireless broadband at this time. They don't want the explanation and the cellular providers are smart to not try to spend too much time explaining it.

After more that eight years working in this industry it still amazes me that most consumers believe that the actual cost of an entry level cell phone is free, and if they break it or lose it after 3 months it comes as a complete shock that the real replacement cost is $100 or $200. Yes, it it true that in most cases the cellular providers don't go out of their way to explain how the reduced cost of the device is subsidized by the revenue collected over the length of the contract, but time and time again I have seen that most people don't want to hear the explanation - they just want the free phone and they sign the contract without much more than a cursory glance at it's contents.

I would imagine that the cellular carrier that spent the most time carefully explaining the necessity for capping wireless broadband access and the method for restricting usage over that cap (be it by overage rate or restricted throughput speeds) up front in their sales rooms would see a reduced growth in sales of their products.

Because the American public wants the benefit of the product, but doesn't want to hear the dirty details of why they can't have unlimited access. How long have we been hearing we should reduce our dependency on foreign oil, yet how many of us truly have made a conscientious effort to use less gas. The majority have done nothing, and it is that same majority that these companies have to market their products to.

Just think of how fast your 5Gs will go when WiMAX and LTE hit it big. Wimax at 5Mbps and LTE claimed >20Mbps. 5 Gigs will be done in no time. A single HD movie could blow that cap.

The other side of the coin is that the 3G and EVDO networks are very expensive to operate. The data pricing is really below cost. That is why the operators are trying to limit usage to basically email on the go.

So just get over it, and pay your bill. You should read the contract before you sign it. Maybe they should start putting in transfer of your home, your car, and 401K in the contract and take it away from you. Stupid people.

Hi Lynnette,

Great article on a really big issue. Sadly, there is no real solution in sight. More people want to stream multimedia content on their mobile devices (which seems to be the major culprit in most most cases) and the carriers cellular networks just aren't set up to support that volume of traffic. While solutions such as Vodafone uses are stopgap measures, in the long run that is all that they will be.

I would speculate that the carriers need to begin the move away from voice and data networks to simply data networks that off VoIP for voice. The carriers clearly can't cope with the untold volumes of data on the wired internet, but that is the content that their subscribers want to access.

The days of telling subscribers to feel good about paying a premium for accessing content and services on mobile devices is long gone. Data caps are merely driving nails into the coffin for the so-called "mobile internet" and will result in killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

There are a number of issues, economic, logistical, and technical, that surround the current wireless networks and the carriers ability to build out to meet demand. The economic and logistical ones are the most daunting in the current economic climate, but the content producers need to be educated (because they still just don't seem to get it) that spectrum is finite and building all of the backhaul in the world won't change that. This is the single most critical aspect that wired content providers tend to overlook. Carriers can't build more spectrum. Technologies such as LTE and WiMAX may, let me repeat that, may offer some temporary relief but will still not significantly alter the spectrum situation. As I said, I don't know what the long-term answer will be, but the current situation is reminiscent of the robber barons of old, squeezing every penny out of every passerby at every opportunity.

Anybody who can justify the overrage fees should be able to answer this one question:

Verizon, Sprint and AT&T all charge $12 per GB of data usage in their 3G Broadband Access accounts...once you go over the 5GB of data usage, Verizon and Sprint charge $250 per GB and AT&T charges $500 per GB (I hear Verizon is considering going to $500 per GB, as well).

All the while, the customer is basically blind when it comes to data usage. To a normal consumer, a web site is a web site. If the web site has video on it, it is still a web site to them. Not everyone is as savvy as the readers of this article. To not adequately inform the customer of a pending overrage charge and then to inform the customer in the next billing cycle should be a crime! It is bad enough the customer was not warned a $3,000 monthly bill is coming their way, but the companies take it one step further and start a new billing cycle so the customer can start doing it again for a week or two.

That is like your cable TV company opening all of the channels up for viewing but if you go to channel 32, 40, 230 or 238, they will charge you $49.99 for each episode because it is pay per view...and you will not find out until you get your next bill.

I do not want to hear about, "Well, he or she signed a contract." Put yourself in these people's shoes...they are consumers...most do not have much if any computer experience...many are over 60 years of age on fixed incomes. They have been set up for failure by the wireless companies.

One person made a comment that the industry is upside down on cost of selling data...well in my opinion, if you have to go from $12 per GB to $250 per GB in usage charges to sell your product, then perhaps you should refrain from selling the product to mainstream consumers and only screw businesses and computer savvy people who can afford those charges.

Something is definitely wrong here and needs fixing!!! Wait, after March Madness, you will be reading a lot more about people running up thousands of dollars in overrage charges...and Verizon and AT&T will certainly be sponsors, paying CBS millions of dollars to advertise for these little USB cards.

Consumer lawyers are going to have a field day with this and they are going to rip the wireless companies a huge one...just wait and see!

Lynnette Luna builds a compelling argument in this article. Data traffic over tier-one networks is growing at 10-15% per month, with 1-2% of users generating up to 50% of the total volume. Considering that operators have finite resources, rapidly escalating data consumption poses a very serious threat to their network infrastructure. To cope with the stress, wireless carriers are imposing data caps on users with premium fees for excessive usage. Not surprisingly, this solution is proving to be problematic, as seen in Billie Parks’s recent lawsuit against AT&T and Radio Shack. Operators need to consider alternative solutions, including smart optimization and adaptive service control, in order to manage latency and maintain the stability, availability and scalability of their networks. Addressing these issues proactively will ensure a consistent user experience and ample capacity as data traffic continues to chase bandwidth availability.

The wireless carriers are using 3G broadband data access to go after a segment of their business that is brand new to them. They have exhausted voice business since 90% of people own cell phones so 3G data is a way for them to get new customers.

Personally, we have had hundreds of customers who are cell phone subscribers with one company and went with Verizon for their data because of the higher speeds and the larger coverage areas nationally. Many of these people were so satisfied with Verizon's data, they switched their voice products to Verizon (which is what Verizon wanted them to do).

Now, Verizon sold them a new account for $59.99 per month which significantly raises their ARPU and gets a new customer.

The customer uses their account for a couple of months, gets charged $59.99 per month and then sees a commercial about the NCAA basketball tournament being FREE and online at CBSsports.com.

The customer watches hours of "free" online coverage of the tournament and then next month when the bill comes in, it is for thousands of dollars.

The customer, distraught, thinking there might be some kind of mistake, calls the carrier. The carrier tells them they should be aware of the contract they signed and tells them they are liable for the overrage (Verizon will tell them they have an option to purchase 10GB of usage for $199 per month but I will usually sell them a second modem and account for another $59.99 per month and to swap the modem out on the 16th of the month). At this point, the customer is generally upset and some even opted to excercise the $175 early termination fee.

Most people cannot possibly remember what they signed five months earlier, they just wanted to watch the "free" basketball tournament online. Incidently, while they watched the tournament, they saw the Verizon or AT&T or Sprint commercial advertising the free modem and wireless broadband service.

As I stated, the lawyers will have a field day with this because mainstream consumers are involved.

The wireless companies are getting new customers and are tying them up for another two years in contracts. They hope to get their voice business switched over to them, as well. If they are losing money with data, they need to do one of three things:

1. Eliminate their money losing data plans altogether.

2. Charge more or tier the data plans better than they are doing right now (Verizon and AT&T's 50MB for $39.99 is a joke and I will not even sell the plan because it sets you up for failure). At least make it so customers will not go from $12 per GB to $250-$500 per GB for overrages. At least the customer will be more aware of their usage if they are charged by the GB (which is what the carriers are really doing now with the overrage fees).

3. Bite the bullet and realize that these NEW customers the carriers are receiving right now might turn out to be new voice, LTE and future customers for new technologies so a few dollars lost in this division will turn into an opportunity later on.

As a dealer, all of the contests the carriers have provide double points earned when we sell a data card over a new wireless phone account. This tells me the carriers want me to sell broadband wireless data accounts.

Something needs to be done here...and not at the consumer's expense. It all starts with the high paid executives who make the decisions at corporate. Perhaps it is time to hire someone who really knows a thing or two about data to run these divisions and to get the "voice" people out of the decision making loop. There is a huge difference between voice and data and it is crystal clear the decision makers in these companies are failing at these policies.

In response to the comment posted by [b] Those Stupid, Irresponsible Consumers!??[/b]

You do realize that the current version of the Verizon Wireless software is designed to open up a pop-up window reporting the customer's current usage totals every time they connect. Plus it has a big button that says "Usage" that they can click on anytime to check their status, like a gas gauge on an automobile.

There are fair concerns to be voiced about the policies practiced by companies and customers in this area, but please don't portray the customers as having no ability to keep track of their usage.

Yes, I am aware of the pop-up and the "big usage button" on the VZ Access Manager above. The problem is the data from these buttons are not real time and reflect the close from the previous day. Also, I train my customers about the usage button.

However, if you do not have the latest VZ Access Manager software installed on your computer (which most people who installed it in January 2009 or before do not...probably over a million people), you are not going to get the pop-up with usage statistics from the previous day...you can receive the data from MyVerizon at VerizonWireless.com and that is what I train my customers to do but unfortunately most Verizon dealers and in the corporate stores do not when it comes to data accounts. And Verizon does not inform their customers about the new software very effectively, if at all.

Verizon also does not effectively tell customers that 1,000 MB equals 1 GB and customers do not know how much usage each web site they visit eats up with bandwidth. As I stated before, to most customers, a web site is a web site.

It might be a lot more effective if Verizon put the usage into dollars and cents and explained how much they have left before they go over...and give the customer the option to turn off their account for the rest of the month to avoid overrages instead of just billing customers for hundreds or thousands of dollars where they receive the bill one third or up to one half into the new billing period where the customer might be racking up new charges they are not aware of.

I think the bottom line is that carriers shouldn't advertise unlimited plans when there is a cap. It seems kind of silly to even have to say that, no? If there's a limit, make it clear; not in the small print. Carriers truly can't afford to offer unlimited if there are abusers, and we all know that we need business to be sustainable or everyone loses in the long run. The fact is that most people don't go above certain averages (ex. 5GB), so just let people know what the limits are and let them choose. Moreover, prior to charging overages, require that customers opt-in to additional charges in real time prior to incurring them. Perhaps even move to a hybrid monthly postpaid plan for a given amount of data, followed by prepaid when customers reach the limits of their plan.

For those interested in pure prepaid options, check out this page:
prepaid-wireless-guide.com/prepaid-wireless-internet.html

Correction: Sprint’s rate for mobile broadband usage in excess of 5GB is $0.05 per MB (about $52 per GB).

IMHO... It is the cost in doing business. Wireless carriers are accustom to billing voice and data is new to them. This will be a learning curve for them and lawsuits is the Consequence of this learning process. This is a normal process in America.

Remember when cellular service first came out. Carriers said that prices are high because cost is high to operate the networks. As consumers adopted the technology, the price came down as the cost came down. Also, carriers will try and expand their margins as much as the public can take.

For data, carriers do not have an effective billing practice and the one they use for data is only applied to handsets; hence a 5GB limit. This limit is not apply the synergies of laptops and high usage devices. This tact has been taken intentionally until uptake. We are now approaching that point.

How can they consciously charge for something so inexpensive to them and with the technology moving to a packet state, it is only getting cheaper. Also, how can they do this with wired ISPs charging for services at a truly "unlimited" manner. They are willing to fight this in court and argue the "mobility" aspect of data services that they are providing, but they know they're going to lose but it is cost they are willing to pay to get the immediate revenue from those who can afford it.

The carriers will lose in court but win in the long run at our cost, as usual.

To go from $12 per GB to $250-$500 GB is a punitive action directed toward the customers. If the wireless companies argue in court that they are losing money at $12/GB they will have a tough time answering why they are even selling the product at that price in the first place...then to go to a 20X-40X rate for overrages is going to condemn them. They will be ordered to make refunds plus interest and they will deserve it! Look at what the carriers are subject to for their early termination fee policies.

They just do not get it!

Verizon does not effectively tell customers that 1,000 MB equals 1 GB because 1024 MB equals 1 GB.

And it is that kind of confusion that muddies the water further for the consumer. Should every salesperson explain exactly how people can keep track of their usage? That would be ideal. But let me break it down for you the way I break it down for the people who ask me.

Currently the average website comes in somewhere under 300 kb. Some are a lot more, many are a lot less. This page is currently 31.3 kb before my post. I checked CNN's main page and it came in at under 20 kb. Pages with streaming video or audio are going to continue to send data, so there's no way to measure their static size.

But assume for the moment that the average web page is 300 kb, which is generous. Now 5 GB equals 5120 MB. And 5120 MB equals 5,242,880 kb. If you divide that by that 300 kb average webpage, that equals 17,476 page loads per month.

I try to explain that it isn't the web browsing that will cause you a problem, it's the file sharing or downloading, or the streaming video/audio that they are perusing, or the other 3rd party applications (email, IM, ect.) that they leave connected all the time, or the spyware, spamware or viruses on their computer that use the connection ... that will get them into trouble.

But after I explain all that, I always wonder how much of it they understood. And I doubt that even you, conscientious person that you are, explain it that well to your customers.

All I'm saying is, it's easy to complain that these things aren't explained well enough to the customers. But you haven't taken the time to understand it well enough to explain it here. And therein lies the problem.

Because I have no doubt you are a smart person. This business is full of smart people. And lots of smart people selling wireless broadband for the various companies in this industry explain it no better than you did.

Also, if you look at Verizon Wireless's web page and look up the wireless broadband access plans, they clearly state the monthly cost, monthly access limit and overage rate in BIG letters. And below, for those who choose to look in the calling plan information window, are an explanation of what a Gigabyte, Megabyte and Kilobyte are, along with a chart explaining approximate sizes of various documents one might view over your internet connection. It's not hard to view and it's not hidden, but it is part of a lot of other information that years of legal history requires the cellular carrier to present. I suspect you can find similar information from the other carrier's websites as well.

Only a fraction of people purchase from Verizon's web site...or Sprint or AT&T's web site, for that matter. Most people purchase their modems and phones from a retail store, big box store or mall kiosk. They are at the mercy of whoever sold it to them and if you go around and have ten people who sell these products sell you one, you will have ten different versions of the sale...many of these people will take short cuts including, but not limited to not making a big deal about the data limits.

I was in a big box store in San Diego last week and there was only one employee in the whole store who could even answer my questions about a Verizon data card. He was more interested in getting the sale and he never mentioned the data limit to me.

Most consumers who purchase these data cards only care about one thing...broadband Internet access. To inform them that a GB is 1000 or 1024 MB or 1,000,000 KB is a waste of energy because they will forget it. They will not remember that that they can download 17,000 web pages or 25,000 photos. They came in to purchase mobile Internet access.

I could give my customers all of the literature in the world explaining downloads and limits (which I do) and 99% of them end up in the garbage can. Most of my customers have cable modems or DSL at home with no limits. Some of them live out in the country and have been using no limit dial up connections.

To get a customer to monitor their data usage is like pulling teeth since these are the only products out there that require the customer to do this since cellular digital packet data (CDPD). And CDPD lost money, big time!!!

The wireless companies need to make this more consumer-friendly, especially since they are going to target those same people later on with LTE or WiMax products at higher speeds.

Everyone knows how to check phone usage and many people are purchasing unlimited accounts where that is not even necessary. But data is a completely different animal and since the wireless companies are marketing toward consumers, they are at the same time setting them up for failure with these data caps.

I heard about a 65 year old grandma who purchased a Verizon Novatel USB720 modem about a year ago from a local big box store. She did a lot of web surfing and she had thousands of photos of the grandkids that she eMailed out to her friends and family.

The next month she had a $3000 bill from Verizon come in the mail. This is not the public relations that Verizon is paying millions of dollars a year to market their good name over the TV, on billboards and on the radio. This has to hurt their good name exactly the same way an AT&T class action lawsuit will with that one woman who purchased the netbook at Radio Shack.

The solutions are simple...it is going to take a benevolent and smart person with a set of you know whats to institute it...preferably someone from the data industry who knows what he or she is doing.

I give Lynnette a lot of credit in publishing her fantastic article...I sincerely hope a lot of people will read it because something needs to be done proactively before it gets out of hand...and we are very close to that happening right now with people receiving these huge bills without any warning whatsoever.

Until the technology advances to the point where the networks can support unlimited access, some sort of limitation is required. Saying that consumers just aren't going to understand or that getting them to monitor their usage is like pulling teeth is greatly undervaluing the intelligence of the average user. And I have many, many customers who have no trouble with this concept at all. It's no harder than remembering to keep track of your gas gauge in your car.

I agree that there is much room for improvement in the way the current plan caps, overage rates and monitoring tools are explained for customers. But the original system Verizon rolled out included a soft cap after 5 GB that throttled back access speeds or stopped the connectivity until the start of the next billing cycle, and the reactions to that system from many consumers was negative as well.

There are better ways to handle instances where the consumer contacts the carrier with that first big bill. I believe Verizon's policy is such that when the consumer has failed to read all the information about their plan and the sales person either did not adequately explain the policy or the consumer did not retain the information and this results in one of these big bills, the consumer can call Verizon Wireless customer service, get a credit of the overage on a one time basis while getting an explanation of how the cap and overage charges work, and how to monitor their usage. There is also a cap on overage charges that keep the second and third occurrence limited to no more that $200 dollars in overage charges. On subsequent bills, the customer is responsible for the charges. That's after 3 educational conversations about how the plan and overage works.

Again, the caps are necessary. The technology is not capable of sustaining the same kind of unlimited access that people get with their home DSL or Wireless internet. There clearly are opportunities for improved communication and education of the consumers. But finding the fault to be all with the carrier is a bit unrealistic. And putting the focus on one carrier only in this comment section is unfair.

Also, I do like the Vodafone Hungary soft cap solution Lynnette mentioned in her article, but wonder how well that would work here. Would the American consumer understand why at 6:00pm their connection has slowed down to 2-3 times dial-up speed? If one U.S. carrier was the first to implement such a policy, would they lose customers?

Then either the caps need to be raised or if the providers are really losing money on this venture, the prices need to be raised. To go from $12 per GB to $250 per GB with Verizon or $500 per GB with AT&T or even $50 per GB with Sprint is absolutely ridiculous. There needs to be a better tiered system. What they have in place today is punitive and is not consumer-friendly!

I agree with you regarding Verizon's policy being more benevolent regarding first time and even second time occurances of overrages. However, I would like to see more proactive behavior in the wireless industry instead of customers receiving bills for thousands of dollars even though the charges will eventually be reversed.

Also, I would like to see better training for data products directed toward the people who sell them. What is in place today is absolutely idiotic. Salespeople should be as consistent in selling data products as they are selling voice products for these companies. The disclosure of policies, procedures and general product knowledge is so inferior with data compared to voice and that effects each and every one of us who sell and represents the product and company. The lack of decent training with data is another compelling reason why the wireless companies hire people who know data to run their data divisions.

The menial data allowances for mobile broadband connections here in the UK are absolutely ridiculous. Suppliers will definitely need to increase these allowances in the very near future if the industry is to expand.

People simply cannot afford to pay up to £30 per month for a meagre 15GB allowance.

3 has recently dropped their prices for a limited period, however as people become more mobile and begin to use their mobile connection as they would use their fixed line connection, they simply will not be able to afford to pay the extra charges for exceeding their data allowances.

There will be no future for mobile broadband if companies do not make changes.

mobile.broadband-onthemove.co.uk

Lynnette,

Thanks for a good article. I've been talking with Verizon since last week, when I got an email telling me I was likely to go over the 5120M limit. While I appreciate the warning, I'm not getting much help on WHY. I've been with Verizon since last September. Usage has been Sep-1955M, Oct-1940M, Nov-1971M, Dec-2333M, Jan-2563M, and suddenly Feb was 4101M and March is currently at 4800M with several days to go.

I'm running a Cradlepoint MBR1000 router (security WPA2) with 2 computers, antivirus and spyware programs, and nothing has changed in our setup or our usage. We don't do movies, gaming or music downloads. On one of the days during this current month, we were gone all day while I had surgery, and that time frame reports about 277M. Verizon apparently can't tell me anything about what was accessed, has no audit procedure I can request, and is not inclined to remove charges (or have I just not said the magic words?).

I'm willing to follow the rules, but I can't seem to find out what I've done to bump my usage up almost 50%. Just as I might question an unfamiliar long-distance call on my phone bill, I'm questioning some of this usage info. Does anyone have any insight into how to track this down?

I have run into the same problem with ATT who has confirmed with me from different dept that less than 1% of their subscribers go over the 5 gb limit. YET, I have two cards and both have gone over in the last 30 days. Our internet usage is normal and we have not downloaded any movies....
ATT has a dept which has been set up now to call sun=bscribers before they go over. If there is less than 1% of subscribers affected, why the need for this dept?
I called ATT to discuss usage before I purchased and was told that it was very rare to go over. I am waiting for my overage bill as the ATT CSR could not quote me a price. They could not anser why my usage went crazy yet my actual visits on websites did not.
I think there is something going on behind the scenes here. Could the accuracy of measurement be steered?

Well, my usage came in at 5112M, just under the limit! After three phone calls to Cust Service, I was told that in addition to my mobile # (cell phone #), and mobile identifier number (MIN)(looks like another telephone number in my metro area), my account also had a third number that the Cust Svc rep couldn't identify--it sounded like 1+2-digit country code+7-digit number. She was going to refer this to Fraud, and promised me a return call the next day--didn't happen, and I'm wondering if anyone else has ever heard a story like this?

I'm capturing their usage data and my notes on an Excel spreadsheet this month, but don't know what else to do. Anybody know if there's a procedure for requesting detailed usage data--I could look at a list of websites or ip addresses and know whether or not these were ours, but they say they can't give me that info.

Good marketing however the implementation is based on Time of Day that has an assumed congestion window as opposed to a real congestion event. The right solution is “smarter” in that it only downspeeds when the network is congested as opposed to pre-defined “busy” periods.

Applying voice concepts of “Busy Hour” to internet usage of anytime, anywhere, anything shows how out of touch some vendors are.

This is mass corporate stealing. Clearly if bandwidth abuse was the primary concern, these companies could, can, and have been able to throttle and block accounts that reach a given limit. Instead they choose to let unsuspecting customers fall victim to their set up tactics. This whole situation shows how ineffective and really negligent our government agencies and representatives have become. All contracts should be Pay as You Go, there should be no way you go over unless you have chosen to.

If there is still justice in this country, I think these wireless companies should get a taste of their own medicine. The average annual income for Americans is about $40,000. So hitting someone without warning with a $5,000 bill is the equivalent of 5/40 which is 12.5% of income. 12.5% of each companies' income is how much each of one of them should be made to pay in penalties.