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Rollover Data Plans

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You know how some people have "rollover minutes" on their mobile plans? If they don't use all their allotted minutes in a month, the remainder gets added to your next month. And so on, and so on...

What if carriers did that for data plans too?
I understand if allowed to pile up indefinitely, a user could collect those data mbs and use so much in one month that they would stress the network (plus multiply that by a million users all saving up for the same month of heavy use). But carriers could place a cap on rollover data and give it a reasonable limit (5GB or 10GB). It would certainly make a person think twice about which carrier they are with.

I just thought it sounded like a "neat" idea... :Smirk: Whatever.
 
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It would be a good idea.. But I can't see companies doing it.. They make too much on data overages to give the consumer a break..

Unlike me, my $45 mobile plan includes unlimited data/tethering on my Sony Ericsson, so I'm not worried about it :)
 
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I think data will continue to be expensive until the infrastructure to support it is built and paid off, much like voice infrastructure which took about 15~25 years. I like the idea of rollover data plans though!
 
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It would be a good idea.. But I can't see companies doing it.. They make too much on data overages to give the consumer a break..

I can't really see them doing this either. I'm sure they do make a ton of money from the people that go over what their plan allows them to use, and it tends to come in large increments, as in 200MB for $15 or something like that, so if someone only ends up using 300MB, they still pay for 400MB worth, but they don't get that 100MB at the end of their next billing cycle, although the carriers still make money off of data that was alotted but not used.
 
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With my provider, for the iPhone plans, they don't charge you overage for the first two months so you can guage how much you use, which is pretty sweet, and if you have a 1gb+ data plan, tethering is no extra charge.

Even for overage charges, it's somethign like $0.05/mb, which isn't THAT bad.

My data plan is part of a $15 add-on which includes "unlimited mobile browsing," call ID/voicemail, evenings/weekends starting at 5pm, and "WhoCalled."

I'm not using a smartphone, it's just a "normal" phone, a Sony Ericcson T715a, which is a sweet 3G phone. When I tether, and I've monitored my usage and my monthly bills, aI have never been charged extra. I went from ~300mb, to about 7gb overnight one month, and there was not a single extra charge.

I downloaded Half Life 2 via steam using it, and it finished in about 3 hours (3.4gb). It's fast, and I love it! It's like having unlimited bandwidth on a 3G rocketstick, so I can be on the Internet anywhere that there's coverage.

Upon checking my data usage, it displays how much I've used, and how much is remaining (it says unlimited), and again, no extra charges for data usage or tethering.

The only downside is, I can only tether on Windows, as Sony's PC Suite software is Windows-only. I think the reason I don't get charged extra, is because when I connect to the web on the phone, it pops up "connecting to mobile network."

When I connect through Sony's software on my PC, it says the same thing on the phone, so I'm thinking it might be a loophole of some kind, so to Fido, it looks like I'm just browsing on my phone.
 

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