Can data traffic clogging be resolved?

We now know that the cellular companies are in dire straits due to the proliferation of data traffic and the fact that they were not prepared for the overwhelming amount of use by cell phone users all over the world, to the degree that their systems just cannot handle the overload.

So what did AT&T Wireless do to combat the huge data demand from devices such as the iPhone and iPad?

Instead of trying to make things more efficient, they decided to take away unlimited data or Internet packages.

AT&T believes that devices like the iPhone are more computers with phone capability rather than phones with Internet capability and now they have changed their pricing model in order to capitalize and make more profit.

This change came mere days before the launch of the new iPhone 4 and the iPad.

Why is unlimited data so important?

Imagine you have a 600-minute cell phone plan and you go over your minutes. Unless you have something similar to AT&T’s Rollover minutes, you are probably going to get hit with some outrageous per-minute fee, like 3 to 10 cents per minute for each minute over the 600 minutes during “peak” time.

Let’s apply this idea to data plans. For people who get a lot of e-mail and attachments, or who listen to the radio on their cell phone, or are using a data card to get online — they can very easily go over the limit and get charged 6 to 10 cents per kilobyte over their limit.

Just to put this in perspective, a gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes and a megabyte is 1,000 kilobytes. The average digital picture size is 5 megabytes and the average e-mail size is 5 kilobytes.

AT&T claims that most data users do not need an unlimited package and use less than 400 megabytes every month, and this is why they decided to discontinue the unlimited package and lower the cost of a “limited” data package in order to make things more affordable for customers.

Why didn’t they simply leave the unlimited data package alone and come up with a lesser expensive limited data package for customers that do not need unlimited?

Why do customers now need to watch their cell phone Internet usage like their cell phone minutes?

There are many cases where customers were slammed with multiple thousands of dollars in data usage from cell phone companies — upwards of $10,000. I know this is an extreme case; however, there has to be a red flag at some point and it looks like the customer in the end will get hurt.

Well, I am not an AT&T subscriber, so what does this have to do with me, you ask?

Verizon Wireless has already hinted that they are going to follow suit in cutting their unlimited data package. Verizon has yet to pull the trigger, as they don’t want to cut the cord as abruptly as AT&T has; however, at some point in the not so distance future it will happen.

If the top two carriers in the country press the red button to kill the unlimited data plan, the question then becomes, will the other carriers follow behind them?

There is no clear answer to that question. Maybe other carriers like Sprint, T-Mobile and lower-tier carriers like MetroPCS, Cricket, Boost Mobile, and so on, may find it a selling feature to bring subscribers over to their side.

The only problem is that the cell coverage areas for high-speed data, from the lower-tier carriers, does not compare to the top two carriers.

The bottom line is that you need to seriously pay attention to what is going on and babysit your cell phones or else you could end up with an outrageous cell phone bill one day.

I am sure at some point you have either gone over your minutes or your text messages. Well, now be ready to go over your data package.

This is yet another mechanism for the cell phone companies to generate profit, as cell phones are becoming less phone and more multimedia devices.

Be aware and you won’t despair.

- George Bardissi