Smartphones Bring End to Unlimited Plans

By Jeff Blyskal, Consumer Reports

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DALLAS (TheStreet) -- Cell-phone carriers are pushing consumers toward smartphones to replace declining revenue from the sale of voice minutes with sales of data services, a growing moneymaker from Internet access, games, streaming music and video -- and anything else that can be digitized.

Today's most popular models include Apple's(AAPL) iPhone, which runs on AT&T(T), HTC's EVO 4G (Sprint(S)), the Nexus G1 (T-Mobile) and the Droid (Verizon(VZ)).

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Until now, smartphone owners paid a flat monthly rate for unlimited data service. But AT&T is revising its pricing of data plans for smartphones, which may foreshadow the death of unlimited wireless data.

Under the new plans, smartphone users can buy 200 megabytes of data service for $15 or 2 gigabytes for $25. Most iPhone users are likely to pay the same or less under the new pricing scheme if current usage patterns and the new price plans stay the same.

Good news in AT&T's new plans: If you go over your monthly plan data allotment, you won't get hit with big overage fees, as is still the case in voice minutes. Rather, you can buy another bundle of data at the same rate you paid for the first one, or you can switch mid-billing-cycle from the 200-megabyte to the 2-gigabyte plan. AT&T will also send text alerts when the customer uses 65%, 90% and 100% of his monthly data limit.

If limits become a fact of smart phone life, you're going to need better information about how many megabytes your various activities -- Web surfing, social-media posts with photos, streaming video and music, games, etc. -- eat up because the price you pay will be based on how much data you use.

AT&T's phones will tell you on an ongoing basis how many megabytes you've consumed. But if you haven't yet purchased a phone or want to switch, check out AT&T's online data calculator to get a better sense of how your daily usage translates into monthly MBs.

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