Verizon Wireless and Sprint offer unlimited calling plans

[mkrishnan]

Houston Chronicle

The plan gives users unlimited calling time for $99.99 a month, instead of offering a specific number of minutes and charging extra for exceeding that limit. Customers will still pay extra for Internet access and text messaging, the company said today in a PR Newswire statement.

I think this is a first for the US cell phone market?

I would be curious to know what percentage of cell users use more than the 2500 minutes or whatever $100 would buy you on a metered plan? It seems that eventually, minutes will hit a point where plans over-provide, like how right now I pay for 1000 daytime minutes but come nowhere near using that, although I might use 1800-2000 minutes including evening/weekend talking. The plan is already only $40/mo, though, so I have little incentive to go to a lower minute plan.

I wonder if, in five years or so, unlimited minutes will catch on in the way free nationwide long distance did, and most users would be on such plans?

 

[aristobrat]

Tit for tat?
http://consumerist.com/357594/sprint-testing-unlimited-minute-plan

 

[mkrishnan]

Interesting! Interesting that it's the two CDMA companies, also. Sprint's deal might actually be better, assuming that the bundle can be used on a decently intelligent phone that provides push e-mail and the like. The Sprint deal appears like it actually is basically unlimited everything?

 

[atszyman]

I think this is a first for the US cell phone market?

I think there have been some of the smaller more local companies that have done completely unlimited minutes before but very few people flock to them due to their limited calling areas.

Exceeding the largest plans is hard to do for an individual with personal usage only. Once you start talking families (with teenagers in particular) or using it for business with jobs that require almost constant phone communication the 2500 minutes can get eaten very very quickly. If you spend 4 hours a day on the phone for your job, you can eat through 2500 minutes in less than half a month.

 

[mkrishnan]

That's very true... I suspect sales/marketing/vendor people use a lot more minutes than that. Although I'm not sure if they'll extend the offer to corporate accounts?

At $100/mo, I don't think people will flock to it. But based on the progression of cell contracts over the past 10 years... $35-40/mo has gone from being about 200 minutes/mo circa 1998, IIRC, to being 1000 or more in 2008. If that trend continues, for probably the vast majority of non-commercial users, the minimum pricing plans would offer nearly unlimited minutes effectively anyway... if that kind of trend continues, that $40/mo will buy 2000 or 2500 minutes in a few years. I'd bet that very few residential / private customersuse more daytime minutes than that. That is, excluding business use, which is very important, but realistically, the percentage of people in the whole population who spend 5 hrs/day on their cell for business is a small fraction.