After AT&T and Verizon announced new mobile rates this past weekend, many users were happy to hear that the cost of voice calls would be reduced for two major American carriers.
Today, the restructured mobile plans and packages went into effect, but the costs, benefits and corporate revenues aren't as simple as a few saved dollars for cell phone calls. In a word, what all gadget geeks, tech-heads and mobile users know is that data is one of the more costly - and ever more popular - aspects of any user's mobile plan.
As smartphone adoption increases, how do major carriers' plans stack up to one another?
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Our good friend (and startup BillShrink rep) Tony Adam wrote today in a blog post, "The real truth behind the story is that the profits are in the data: Verizon's revenue is now up 24% (they reported $15.8 billion in Q309), with 17% coming from data services."
To put it bluntly, we're all texting, emailing, tweeting and updating constantly - who even has time for a phone call these days? The laws of supply and demand state that as demand for voice services wanes and the public consumption of mobile data services rises, corporations will realize that it's worth their while to create a false economic incentive for voice packages while maintaining and increasing rates for data packages.
The tricky part, then, becomes stripping away the marketing-ese, the convoluted packaging structures and the hard-pitch sales routines that go along with them to determine how users can get the best, most fitting data and voice plans.
Thanks to BillShrink's unwavering focus (and they said the process behind this achievement was "painful... the carriers didn't make it easy"), we have a concise, clear infographic on how mobile plans and rates from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile all measure up to one another. Or at least we have a start: Based on data they collected, the BillShrink folks estimate there are now 10 million ways to structure a cell phone plan.
To see the full-size, fully detailed infographic, check out BillShrink's large version.
For example, Verizon and Sprint are currently asking $119 for unlimited voice, text and smartphone data plans, while T-Mobile and Sprint's equivalents ring in at $20 less per month. In fact, just about all the plans frmo these four carriers are identical until you start to factor in text messaging and mobile web browsing, at which point Verizon and AT&T start to charge more than their competitors.
As smartphones and "superphones" take over the market, do you think we'll see more network-agnostic devices? And with more network-agnostic smartphones sucking up more mobile 3G bandwidth, do you think all carriers will raise their pricing for data and text packages?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
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