Verizon Wireless ends unlimited data plans

So perhaps...

The mobile industry won't make the huge mistake that ISPs have and offer ridiculous amounts of bandwidth for peanuts... or am I being optimistic?

diddums

You should try Australia, my 29 dollar a month gets me 500mb of data.

In Australia, the wireless companies bend you over and rape you because we don't have much choice, everything eventually comes back to Telstra/Vodafone/Optus. and they generally try to match each other.

and i thought the UK was bad for Mobile data

$15 for 200mb LOL

norm £5 for 500MB or 1GB depending on mobile provider (what's lame amount any way) and

what's interesting is Three UK mobile has just made an Unlimited data package now (or should i say the One plane now is unlimited) that's £35 an month with 2000 mins any mobile network/landline, 5000 txt, 5000 mins between Three UK mobile phones {it does not use the 2000 mins it has its own 5000 mins} and that's with just about any phone on 24 month contract that they offer,

only down side with Three UK is its like T-mobile in the USA hardly works where you want it to as its an new network compared to T-mobile/orange (everything anywhere merging towers so technically the most coverage in the uk now) and Vodafone and o2 that's been around for long time so 2g coverage is mostly every where for all 4 networks in the UK (3g mostly around now but still patchy in some spots)

They love it!

Always makes laugh when I read about all these wonderful online services we're all told we must get into, streamed media and games, of the governments banging on about the services they have onine. Yeah right!

The ISPs must love all these streamed services, their grotty little infrastruture can't handle them very well but who cares when they can find enough customers ( read: cash cows ) prepared to pay absolutely ridiculuous prices for mobile bandwidth and keep pumping the money into the exec's bonuses and shareholders pockets.

You're all suckers

I teather my blackberry to my macbook via bluetooth. I use payG on T-Mobile, for £10 a month you get unlimited txts and data and calls are cheap if you're calling other t-mobile (different networks are a different matter). I successfully chew through a whole heap of data and am unhindered in where I surf and what services I can access using vpn. Try it some time.

Hotspot 'service'

"The carrier – a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodaphone Group – also announced that it will begin charging for its LTE mobile hotspot service, which turns certain phones into Wi-Fi access points"

That phrasing is oddly over-sympathetic to Verizon. It's simply wrong to suggest that using a phone as a wireless access point is a Verizon service ("its LTE mobile hotspot service"). It is not. It is a feature of the phone's software; the carrier has precisely nothing to do with it. Carriers have simply come up with the wheeze of artificially denying you the ability to use a feature of your phone unless you pay them a fee. There is absolutely no legitimate justification for a carrier charging a customer to use their phone as a wireless access point.

Not surprised

I'm on the AT&T $15 200Mb plan, and to be honest the amount is fine for me. But after visiting the UK a couple of times in the last six months, where I bought an O2 mobile broadband dongle, I'm really surprised at how much we're paying for data here in the US. You lot in the UK might complain, but the UK and Europoe are light years ahead of the US when it comes to mobile data and how it's sold. Trouble is, there are far too many complacent customers here to provoke the carriers into droping prices, and little competition, exacerbated by carrier-exclusive phones, so if you want that nicer phone you have to o with that carrier. What a bloody mess (a bit like this comment!)