Verizon to unveil capped mobile data plans
STEVE CHIOTAKIS:
Another feature of smart phones is disappearing. Unlimited data will soon be a thing of the past for new Verizon customers.
On Thursday, Verizon will unveil capped data plans. So if you like to watch hours and hours of cat videos on your phone, you may have to pay up.
Marketplace’s Steve Henn reports.
Steve Henn: iPhone and Android users with their apps and YouTube addictions are gorging themselves on mobile data. Don Kellogg tracks mobile trends for Nielsen.
Don Kellogg: What we have seen in the past is that this has been doubling every year.
And as more people get smartphones its only getting worse. Carriers like Verizon and AT&T spend billions each year trying to keep their mobile networks up to speed. Now they’re asking the big data users to help pick up the tab. Initially, only a small group of the heaviest users will have to pay more.
Scott Schwarzhoff is a V.P. at Appcelerator, an app publishing platform. He says that won’t last long.
Scott Schwarzhoff: You are going to just have an ever increasing usage out there of data.
Schwarzhoff says it’s only a matter of time before we are all watching our data the way we watch our minutes now.
I’m Steve Henn for Marketplace.
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