Well, summer is almost here which means that once again the prepaid carrier war is heating up. This time in addition to prices being dropped, more and more companies are offering unlimited data to go with the unlimited talk and text we already enjoy.
MetroPCS,
GoPhone, and
Virgin Mobile are some of the most recent to add the service, but they’re far from the only ones who offer it. However, this begs the question: do we really need unlimited data?
The knee-jerk reaction is to say that yes, we do. And while I can understand wanting to feel that security of not having to worry about how much data is being used, paying for unlimited data can be a waste. Many prepaid plans have limitations on using hotspots with the unlimited data plans (and with good reason) which means the data is only good for your phone.
The truth of the matter is that, much like talk and text, you probably aren’t using as much data as you think. In fact, a
Mobidia report averaged out the data usage of thousands of users from 2014 and found that the average data usage per month was around 1.8 GB. Now, that figure is a little old and it’s probably safe to assume that’s gone up, but even if the average has doubled and is now around 3.5 GB, that’s still a relatively small amount. In fact, you can get a 3 GB plan from any carrier for at least $20 less than an unlimited data plan. And I can’t remember the last time that I used more than 3 GB of data in a month.
The long and short of it is that prepaid customers are pretty savvy and definitely smart enough to limit data usage to wifi connections (which are almost literally everywhere nowadays anyway). So, do we really need unlimited data? Or is it simply yet another con to make you feel like the service is more useful than it is?
What do you think? Do you have an unlimited data plan? Leave me a note below and let me know.]]>
