Are Operators’ Changes To Data Plans On Your Radar?
Vodafone UK announced this week that it was making a significant change to its unlimited data plans, and will now begin charging users if they go over 500MB of traffic in a month. This comes after operators like AT&T and Verizon in the US have talked about seeing the industry shift to usage-based data pricing from flat-rate or unlimited plans. These sorts of stories might not seem all that important for mobile developers, but they're worth paying attention to.
Undoubtedly one of the industry trends that sowed the seeds of the current boom in mobile data use and app downloads was the spread of affordable flat-rate data plans. No matter what the actual financial cost of usage-based pricing plans, they carry a significant mental transaction cost for users, where they're constantly trying to decide if a link is worth clicking on, or something's worth downloading, because they're being charged for it. By setting data usage at an easily understood flat monthly rate, that transaction...