Thursday, January 27, 2011

AT&T Considers Speed and Volume Tiers in LTE

Zach Epstein reports in the BGR Blog that AT&T " .. may have plans to offer tiered data services when it launches its Long Term Evolution network later this year. The carrier apparently plans to trial two separate types of tiers alongside its LTE service: speed tiers and data tiers. Speed tiers will provide LTE data service at varying rates of speed depending on the plan a customer selects, similar to land-based broadband services currently offered by ISPs. Data tiers will afford subscribers “data buckets” of varying sizes, similar to the configuration of AT&T’s current data plans" .

See "AT&T may implement speed and data tiers for 4G LTE service" - here. The post shows a document with further details.

However, as we know data service plans are very dynamic (specifically in the AT&T case). Verizon was also considering the same ideas (back in November - see "Verizon - Speed and Usage Price Tiering" - here) but is expected now, with the launch of the iPhone, to offer an unlimited data plan for its smartphone customers. It was said then that "The speed factor throws in another wrinkle in how carriers are looking to price their data plans".

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