Unlimited Plans - Subscribers Dream & Operators NightmareNetwork and spectrum are pretty expensive things. Huge costs go in deploying networks. An operator who is ready to incur costs expects good return on investment.

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But the costs are so huge that it takes years for an operator to look at profits. Also they cannot charge heavily for service because they have incurred huge costs. So there is a trade off between what we expect and what we get.

Typically, voice networks are pretty much controlled. Each voice call is given a radio channel and if all the channels in a certain area are occupied user starts feeling the congestion. This was one of the challenges with the voice network that service providers used to face or still facing. Now with data coming in, that challenges have increased many folds.

Data is a best effort service. That is at a given point of time, a user doing data from his mobile may consume more than one channel. Since spectrum is limited, networks easily get choked up. Thanks to 3G, since voice calls are on one radio technology and data on other, at least my voice calls are safe.

Why are unlimited plans a distant dream? Its simple economics! More you give, more they ask. It has been result of many research’s that 5-10% of subscribers that use unlimited plans consume 70-80% of network bandwidth. This certainly is not fair. Assume that in a give region there is geek sitting and consuming all the bandwidth, doesn’t our insanity levels go high? AT&T had burnt its hands with unlimited plans. First the networks are congested, next subscribers are not happy and the result no unlimited plans. Even if the plans are advertised “unlimited”, they are not “truly” unlimited.