According to CNNMoney, “Verizon Wireless said early Friday it will lower prices on its unlimited wireless plans.  Later in the day, AT&T followed suit.  Verizon cut its unlimited family talk and text plan from $229.99 to $149.99 and its nationwide unlimited voice plan was reduced to $69.99 from $99.99.  An unlimited family voice plan will cost users $119.99, down from $199.99, and nationwide unlimited talk and text plans were lowered to $89.99 from $119.99.”

Regardless, we’re monitoring wireless rates for all carriers and how that effects our clients and interested parties.  While the number one and two carriers do battle, it means good news and cost savings for all consumers as price compression also affects the competitors where you will find changes with smaller players as well.  Pay attention to your bills, when your contract runs out, if you’ve recently signed a contract with either carrier, you may want to pull out the paperwork, give them a call and see if you can take advantage of this new pricing because more than likely, they won’t be calling to tell you how to reduce your  bill.

Now if you’re currently using AT&T, you won’t see sudden cutoffs on your data where it will stop working, rather, AT&T is attempting to rein in “excessive” data use by  forcing customers to pay premiums for high usage or optimal quality of service.  It seems that 3% of their smartphone customers currently chew up 40% of their network capacity.

According to a Rethink-Wireless Article, Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s head of wireless indicated “We’re going to try to focus on making sure we give incentives to those small percentages to either reduce or modify their usage so they don’t crowd out the other customers in those same cell sites,” he said, though he was short on actual details of how this would be achieved.

What this will do is create two areas for the consumer to be concerned with:

1.  Learn what applications are the bandwidth hogs and mitigate your current usage

2.  Application developers will have to re-write applications and design future apps to be more conservative with data usage.

AT&T is not the only mobile carrier concerned with customer usage of it’s data services.  Sprint/Nextel CEO Dan Hesse commented at its investor conference: “When you think about postpaid …. it’s not just going to be your phone. It’s going to be your camera, your iTouch, your gaming device – they’re all going to become wireless, so what’s going to be the right plan for those? As we move into 4G, it’ll be much less about minutes and more about gigabytes as the main driver of what customers are buying per month, because it’s going to be VoIP oriented. Minutes will be largely irrelevant.”

Regardless, the future of wireless is about to change and for some, it’s dramatic change.  If you thought a flat-rated plan was your answer to leveling your wireless costs- guess what?  It’s only about to get more complicated.

You had a phone, dial tone and that was it.  Along with the Carterfone decision changing the face of telecommunications, it also brought about new technologies and competitive services.  Along with that, our bills have the ability to shoot through the roof and a family with a few cell phones may pay upwards of $200 per month plus any wireline services you might have at home.

Industry defenders would argue that as new advancements are introduced, those come at a cost, whether it be justified or not.

However, according to Forbes magazine, there is a disruptive force within the telecom elite.  Quick can you name the cell phone company that has the 5th spot in wireless subscribers?  MetroPCS is that company and CEO Roger Linquist is the man who is on a mission to bring the industry into what many phone companies fear being labeled – a cheap commodity.

While the larger foes look to offset any drop in revenue by introducing more “value added” services by implementing the larger bandwidth of 4G technologies, Linquist plans on using it to carry phone calls at a cheaper cost and deliver that to the consumer.

According to Forbes:  “The new gear is so powerful that he will be able to simultaneously increase the quality of cell phone calls while cutting the cost of providing each minute, from just under a penny today to closer to a tenth of a cent. Linquist charges 2.1 cents a minute, just under half of the industry’s average revenue. He’ll continue cutting where he can, confident his singular focus on running the cheapest voice network will keep his costs well below those of the rest of the industry.”

Linquist is a pioneer of sorts, having MetroPCS use the new technologies to pack more bits into high-traffic areas within his network for example.  By using small antennas that dangle from a telephone pole called minicells are ways they can keep on reducing costs for them and eventually their customers.

Regardless, a company’s responsibility should be to monitor and determine if a portion of wireless users can benefit from this.  While advancements in technology are great, controlling costs and services is an ever-changing target.  An unbiased look at your current usage patterns and audit of your bills could bring about tremendous benefits to your bottom line, make sure you do your best to look and consider “other” companies than the biggest providers in your area.  My experience is that companies typically look at the top 3 carriers and disregard the other providers, don’t overlook what they can bring to the table.