Sprint Nextel will increase its postpaid rates on Jan. 30 by applying a $10-per-month premium data charge to all new smartphone activations. Existing smartphone customers will not be affected unless they upgrade or activate another smartphone, the company said Tuesday.
The charge will help Sprint offer simple and affordable unlimited plans while maintaining a wireless network able to meet the growing appetite for a richer mobile experience, said Bob Johnson, president of Sprint’s consumer business.
“Sprint’s unlimited data plans — with or without the $10 charge — continue to beat the offerings of our top national competitors, who cap users’ data, charge data overages, and do not offer the unique functionality of Any Mobile, Anytime, which gives subscribers on the Sprint network unlimited calling to any other wireless user in America regardless of carrier,” Johnson said.
Assessing the Real Costs
AT&T introduced capped data plans in June 2010 to get a better handle on the minority of smartphone subscribers who download huge amounts of data. In effect, AT&T placed a $10 premium on the 2GB plan it priced at $25 per month, whereas customers consuming 200MB or less only pay $15 per month.
AT&T said it expected the two capped plans to cover the monthly data needs of 98 percent of its customers. The remaining two percent of subscribers who exceed their monthly data caps pay extra fees: $15 per month for each additional 200MB under the lower-cost plan or $10 for each block of additional 1GB of data under the higher-priced plan.
By contrast, Sprint’s Everything Data plans include unlimited text, web access, and calling to any mobile phone. The new $10 charge is intended to reflect the reality that today’s smartphone customers use, on average, 10 times more data than users of traditional feature phones, driving substantially higher data usage and…