August 11, 2006
We Need Better Cellular Wireless Data Plans
For the last two days, my regular Internet connection was unavailable. As a result, I was forced to eat up the bandwidth on my cellular data plan, to research and post articles here and elsewhere. No VoIP calls, no streaming media, no downloading of movies. Just pure browsing. Nothing outside of allowable activities.
My monthly bandwidth cap of 250 Mb/month is virtually gone in two days, leaving me only about 70Mb for the rest of the month. If I pass the 250 Mb cap, it's going to cost me about $3/Mb. At my current bandwidth usage rate, that's about $210-240/day of excess fees. Literally.
So I called up my cellular provider and begged for a better data plan, to no avail. It's the third time I've asked this year. They'd already rolled back their "unlimited" offer on PCMCIA laptop "data cards". No more unlimited access. And nothing better than 250 Mb/mth.
But it got me to thinking about how expensive Internet access, hosting, etc., used to be even just five years ago. Prices eventually went down as the actual market size increased. At the current rates of cellular wireless data plans, it's just too expensive to want to make VoIP calls on a smartphone/ PDA. Unless you use something like MINO Wireless, which keeps the Internet access during a VoIP call to a minimum.
Otherwise, forget about mobile VoIP with soft clients running on your mobile device. For now, at least. Maybe, in the near future, when mobile telecoms get on board with VoIP, we'll see more favorable rates for data plans.
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