O2 are pulling unlimited mobile broadband data for new smartphones that they sell and instead changing the tariffs based on how much data users want to pay for each month.
The new O2 smartphone tariffs are due to be introduced on July 24th which is the same day that the new iPhone 4 is due to be launched meaning all new contracts on this will require users to choose what mobile broadband data allowance they want with their new phone contract.
Existing customers who are already on “unlimited” data for their mobile phone won’t be affected until they come to upgrade or renew their contract. New customers or those who are upgrading a new contract will be offered unlimited data until 1st October and then form that date onwards they will have to decide if to take any bolt ons.
Unlimited data was used to draw new customers into using smartphones, but with the popularity of smartphones booming the mobile operators are now looking at keeping these types of phones profitable and to look after their network capacity.
The new O2 data pricing is:
O2 do say that the 500Mb of data (the minimum of offer) is currently 2.5 times the average O2 customers current usage, this does not say that this just related to O2 Smartphone customers however, as we anticipate the results to this statistic would be different if they took just smartphone customers into account.
Out of O2′s 21 million customers they say the changes will mean only around 3% of these customers will be affected and have to pay additional charges because these 3% of customers are using up around 36% of O2′s data capacity on their network.
As more applications and media becomes available over the internet for smartphone users we anticipate that in the future these data limits in place may have to be reviewed as going forward more bandwidth hungry applications will become available.