Wireless Carriers Are the Last Roadblock to a Truly Mobile Society

We have the smart phones. We have the tablets. We have the MiFis, the mobile applications, and the mobile web.  And we have 4G… kind of.  High speed mobile broad band is becoming increasingly available across the nation, but it is not yet affordable. Before we can become a truly mobile society, wireless carriers need to restructure their data plans to make them affordable for the majority of Americans.

Let’s take a look at how much it would cost a mobile household each month. According to the US Census Bureau, the average household has two adults. Assuming that both adults have smart phones, that is an extra $30 per month each for data plans ($60). Add an iPad for each, and that is a minimum of another $30 each ($120). Finally, let’s throw a 4G MiFi in the mix, at another $50 per month ($170). That is $170 on top of the standard cell plan, which runs in the $75 - $100 range for a typical family plan.

A monthly mobile bill of $245 - $270 is simply cost prohibitive for most households. And to make matters worse, each of those data plans comes with 5GB of data. More than likely, they won’t hit half of that on their smart phones, meaning that some of the data is paid for but never used.

In order for US households to complete the transition into the mobile age, we need wireless carriers to bundle data packages, much like broadband providers did in the early 2000s. Instead of five 5GB data plans, like in the example above (which wastes at least 5Gb each month), a single 20GB plan that is shared across all devices would be more cost effective for the consumer. And better consumer value translates into more consumer sales.

With that being said, the wireless carriers are not in a position yet to provide affordable data. One of the reasons the prices remain high is because of the limited availability of mobile bandwidth. We learned the hard way, what happens when devices and subscribers outpace bandwidth, when the iPhone was released into major markets like New York and San Francisco. The high prices for mobile data will keep the number of connected devices at a manageable amount until the infrastructure is able to handle the increased load.

Hopefully, we will soon see mobile broadband prices drop as bandwidth becomes more available, much like it did with traditional broadband after the turn of the century.