O2 says they’ll offer unlimited iPhone data after all, but is it?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 05 November 2007 14:25

Your IT - Mobility

After all, nothing truly is unlimited, and abuse at the expense of other users access to what is, even with 3G and 3.5G HSDPA connections, still a limited resource, is still abuse if it is adversely affecting others.

3G and 3.5G are still evolving, and the iPhone isn’t even there yet. With the successor to 3.5G networks being developed and WiMAX on the way, it’ll still be a few years before 100GB download limits on phones becomes standard, but it will happen at much faster speeds.

At least everyday users who buy an iPhone and just want to use all of the features of browsing the web, watching YouTube videos, looking at Google Maps, sending and receiving email with worrying about the cost can now do this without the threat of bill shock because someone in the family went on a YouTube download frenzy on the iPhone one month.

What O2 could do now to make themselves look even better days before the launch after stopping the 200MB download limit stories with their new unlimited announcement is to also match AT&T’s promise for a global roaming data price – and be a lot more generous than AT&T’s 20MB or 50MB limits, or prepare to be in the future.

Upcoming 3G iPhones and authorized third party apps will also likely deliver more wireless audio and video, and more wireless broadband data usage than ever before.

So, giving end users a greater amount of so-called “unlimited data” is to be applauded, as is the selling of gigabytes inexpensively by companies such as Three Mobile on a global basis, making wireless broadband a real and affordable option for many people, and even Telstra in Australia lowering the cost of 3GB of wireless broadband data by almost half on Next G mobile phones and 7.2Mbps HSDPA data cards, with significantly greater real wireless broadband coverage across Australia than all the other providers put together, although the cost is still over AUD $100 per month.

US phone company Verizon was limiting customers to an astoundingly large 5GB (for mobile providers) with some restrictions on what could and couldn’t be downloaded and was sued by for advertising their phone data as unlimited. Verizon settled with the Attorney General of New York.

Inexpensive wireless broadband is still expensive to provide, and expensive to subscribe to. The iPhone is still only 2G, but the 3G version is coming, as has the rise of much higher wireless data usage at last.

Phone companies of the world have been busily preparing, and you can be certain this won’t be the last limited ‘unlimited’ announcement, and that download limits will dramatically increase. It'll just take time. The threat of WiMAX growing ever stronger as an alternative might just speed them up!