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The Birthing of Postpaid Speed-Capped Data Plans


Arysyn

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I knew it was going to happen, as I've been saying here on S4GRU for a long time now, so here it is, starting with AT&T's Unlimited Choice plan :

 

http://about.att.com/story/att_brings_new_unlimited_wireless_and_entertainment_deals_to_market.html

 

 

I decided to start this thread in anticipation of the possibility for more of these type of plans from carriers, as I believe this could become a great way for carriers to offer cheaper data plans using unlimited data. Although, there still is the possibility of cheaper per gb data plans using the speed cap configuration. So, in the possibility of that happening, I purposely omitted the word "unlimited" from this thread's title.

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3mbps is pretty slow.  Imagine updating/downloading larger apps from the PlayStore or Apple Store.  Something that could be downloaded in seconds is now minutes.  I'm going to go ahead and just say that AT&T will discontinue this when it doesn't attract enough customers.  The price for that tier of speed doesn't offer the same value that Verizon/T-Mobile give.

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We are still a ways away from seeing carriers to be able to offer anything "higher". Speed based plans are just stupid right now with reliability of speeds so slow to begin with. I suppose 3Mbps is doable, but you will not see 25Mbps offered on a national carrier anytime soon. That would open the door to lawsuits when people start realizing their speeds are terrible. 

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May as well go for Cricket instead of that $60 3 Mbps plan. Crickets not using the proxy anymore, plus will be rolling out VoLTE/WiFi calling soon.

So does mean ping times are the same as AT&T now? If so Cricket is very attractive especially since they will soon have VoLTE.

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So does mean ping times are the same as AT&T now? If so Cricket is very attractive especially since they will soon have VoLTE.

They are very close by going to a prioritized system sort of like what T-Mobile runs with MetroPCS. I only wonder what took so long to go that direction. The proxy server might have been something needed in the 3G Era but in the 4G Era it seemed redundant.

 

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

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So does mean ping times are the same as AT&T now? If so Cricket is very attractive especially since they will soon have VoLTE.

Correct. Now that VoLTE/VoWiFi is coming I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them again. Last year when they had that nationwide proxy outage, it was a big turn off to me and I ended up porting a family member away after that happened.

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3mbps is pretty slow. Imagine updating/downloading larger apps from the PlayStore or Apple Store. Something that could be downloaded in seconds is now minutes. I'm going to go ahead and just say that AT&T will discontinue this when it doesn't attract enough customers. The price for that tier of speed doesn't offer the same value that Verizon/T-Mobile give.

AT&T may discontinue this, or they may do what I believe to be the smarter thing by merging Cricket into AT&T's already well-established GoPhone service and create somewhat of a hybrid plan to better compete with T-Mobile.

 

AT&T especially will have trouble if DT/T-Mobile gets Dish and their added extra bit of spectrum that ought to help T-Mobile finally have a chance at defeating AT&T for the #2 spot in the big two.

 

More reason why AT&T better hope DT decides to go back to their decision in favor of selling T-Mobile, or else this could get ultra-competitive for them.

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