Rise in mobile data usage might spell the end to ‘unlimited’ plans

A report published by Cisco made projections that mobile devices would outnumber the entire human population by the year 2016. The report stated that there will be 10 billion mobile connected devices around the world by then, while the United Nations has made projections that the human population will reach 7.3 billion in the same year.

This report was mixed with various reactions from industry experts and analysts.

Mary Brown, who is the director of government affairs on Cisco, also commented: “We are going to start to see quality-of-service issues arising in major metropolitan areas if we don’t act to add more spectrum to these mobile networks.”

Suraj Shetty, who is the vice-president of products and solutions at Cisco, stated: “By 2016, 60% of mobile users – three billion people worldwide – will belong to the Gigabyte Club, each generating more than one gigabyte of mobile data traffic per month.”

These are indeed massive figures which indicate massive growth. One particular analyst is saying that this could spell the end of unlimited data plans.

Gabriel Solomon, who is the head of public policy for the GSM Association (GSMA), stated: “The numbers today show that for many operators, one of the key drivers to get mobile data usage into the market, the ‘all you can eat’ tariff, is going to become an anachronism. I don’t think it’s a sustainable pricing strategy, and we’ll see more and more operators go to a tiered or value-based pricing. Clearly it’s unsustainable if people who consume huge amounts of data are paying the same amount as people who consume little data.”

He added: “Some [companies] are going to approach network operators and try and negotiate ‘paid interconnect’ terms so they can establish high quality of service, particularly for video.”

Regulatory economist Martin Cave also commented on the matter, saying: “The mobile sector doesn’t have hundreds of operators and has a limited amount of choice, so there’s always… a tension between, on one hand, a tacit degree of co-operation among the operators, and on the other, out-and-out competition.”