It’s no secret that most of us are spending more of our “online time” on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This is only going to increase over time, and ?one study suggests mobile data use will grow 325% by 2018. The carriers seem to be responding to this by focusing on their data plans more as smartphones become more common than regular phones.
Sprint and T-Mobile have had some success in drawing new customers with their broad data plans, and now AT&T and Verizon are in a new battle over increasing the data on some plans or offering the same data at a cheaper rate.
Another driver of data versus voice plans is a feature called “Voice over LTE” (VoLTE) which allows voice calls to be placed across the much faster LTE data networks if the hardware (and carrier) supports it. This use of mobile Internet access promises higher quality audio on voice calls, and the potential future integration of video and other voice services.
Verizon and AT&T have announced they will look at allowing interoperability of this feature on each other’s networks in 2015, increasing the availability (and adoption) for customers of both carriers.
It continues to be a highly mobile, always connected world!