I don't see why data caps are really necessary. From what I'm seeing on this thread , people aren't using data that much. In that case, there is no need to cap them at some arbitrary value. Even if they say that 98% of their users won't be affected--they don't use more than 2 GB--, it still means that 2% are getting screwed.
I've been doing some calculations, and I just don't understand why the cap is in place (other than for increasing revenue, of course).
AT&T always says that the minority of their users are using the majority of the bandwidth. From what I'm seeing from different threads, most people aren't using more than 2 GB, and the people who are, are using at most 10 GB. Of course, there's a few people who do go over 10 GB, but they're so rare that they're pretty much statistically insignificant, and if AT&T wanted to, they could terminate their accounts as they're probably voilating their very generic terms of use in the contract, but that's a different discussion.
Assuming that 98% of AT&T's users are using at most 2 GB, and the rest are using 5 times as much bandwidth, then by forcing the 2% to not use more than 2 GB, they're only reducing network bandwidth by 8%. I don't think freeing up 8% of the network is worth annoying so many customers. Besides, for the entire 2% to use the majority of the network, as they often say, they'd have to use more than 52 GB a month. And since most of us don't even get close to 2 GB a month, the number is even higher.
Luckily we still have the choice of keeping our unlimited plan. For $5 more a month, we can be sure we'll never need a higher plan, especially since there doesn't seem to be a higher plan than 3 GB for $35 (DataPro plus $10 for the extra GB). I hope all this means we'll be getting more as consumers, besides the $5 "discount."
I've been doing some calculations, and I just don't understand why the cap is in place (other than for increasing revenue, of course).
AT&T always says that the minority of their users are using the majority of the bandwidth. From what I'm seeing from different threads, most people aren't using more than 2 GB, and the people who are, are using at most 10 GB. Of course, there's a few people who do go over 10 GB, but they're so rare that they're pretty much statistically insignificant, and if AT&T wanted to, they could terminate their accounts as they're probably voilating their very generic terms of use in the contract, but that's a different discussion.
Assuming that 98% of AT&T's users are using at most 2 GB, and the rest are using 5 times as much bandwidth, then by forcing the 2% to not use more than 2 GB, they're only reducing network bandwidth by 8%. I don't think freeing up 8% of the network is worth annoying so many customers. Besides, for the entire 2% to use the majority of the network, as they often say, they'd have to use more than 52 GB a month. And since most of us don't even get close to 2 GB a month, the number is even higher.
Luckily we still have the choice of keeping our unlimited plan. For $5 more a month, we can be sure we'll never need a higher plan, especially since there doesn't seem to be a higher plan than 3 GB for $35 (DataPro plus $10 for the extra GB). I hope all this means we'll be getting more as consumers, besides the $5 "discount."
