Unlimited Wireless Plans Coming

An anonymous reader tells us about a BusinessWeek story claiming that in a few years most wireless plans will be unlimited. And pretty costly: unlimited cell calling, SMS, and data for on the order of $115 - $150 a month. Sprint is conducting a trial of such an offering in San Francisco, with the intent of rolling it out nationwide, and other carriers are said to be sure to follow suit. An interesting claim in the article is that in 5 years time, 40% of the US population will be untethered from landlines and using their cell numbers exclusively (vs. 15% now).

Just like ISPs!

[inviolet]

"Our customers have unlimited bandwidth, but some are more unlimited than others!"

Now that we know how ISPs have chosen to implement 'unlimited', we should expect similar from the cellular companies. It won't be long before they've all merged together anyway.

The FDA requires food products that contain no actual cheese to refrain from using the word 'cheese' in their names. And so you get things like 'cheez whiz'. I say we require ISPs and Cellular companies to do likewise. Then we'll know when our plan is truly 'unlimited' versus merely 'unlymited'. :)

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

...now I am generally curious. Seeing as I don't use a cell phone right now, and I pay on the order of about 39.99 a month for unlimited long-distance calling, and that money goes toward... you know... actual infrastructure... where is my $115 bucks a month going? Wireless removes a lot of the overhead (no wires, no poles, no digging up the fsck'ing road to bury said wires) and simplifies it enormously (buy small parcel of land, rezone, and plop tower on it...), why such a significant jump? Is it simply because people perceive cellular phones as so mystical that they think "surely this must cost a fortune to run? Or is it the phone company saying.... well, they pay 60 bucks a month for 500 minutes, they should see this as a deal!? And on a total sidenote... How do they intend to deal with emergencies. Landlines are capable of deaing (better) with overload during crisis, but cellular systems just go pft!

Unlimited? Has to be MUCH cheaper.

[gelfling]

Today I have one land line exclusively for the 'unlimited' aspect of the MCI Neighborhood plan because that line accrues 4-5,000 (thousand) minutes a month. It costs $72 including taxes. I also have an AT&T CallVantage VoIP line for work and I believe its 'unlimited' is actually capped at 5,000 minutes/month. But before you all tell me to discard MCI landline let me tell you that it's orders of magnitude more reliable than CallVantage. If I had to pay for AT&T VoIP, I wouldn't. It sucks. Then I have 5 lines on a shared minute Sprint plan. 2,500 minutes/month. So if Sprint wants to give me 'unlimited' minutes it has to be an additional 5,000 minutes per month and it can't cost more than $50/month plus all the garbage taxes. So the price has to come down by at least half. Compared to crappy VoIP for $25/month 'unlimited' cell would have to come down in price by 3/4ths.

Re:Unlimited wireless in Finland, starting from 57

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you don't pay attention to exchange rates, but by the time these services are launched, 58 euros will be 150 dollars!

Long Distance

[EthanS]

Its only a matter of time, long distance calling on landlines was per minute up until about 5 or so years ago. Now most plans are unlimited long distance. Cell phones are just a few years behind. Competition drives innovationa and eventually leads to the lowest common denominator type solution, like unlimited calling.