If you have been holding off on upgrading your family's cell phone plan due to the sheer confusion of the market, today's announcement might be the necessary catalyst you need.
Think of the wireless network exactly like a massive, multi-lane highway. During rush hour, the carrier has to systematically decide who gets to drive in the fast lane and who gets slowed down. The complicated new family plans we are seeing are fundamentally about selling expensive VIP passes for that highway, cleverly disguised under the marketing umbrella of 'unlimited data' for everyone in the home.
The concept of shared data was initially pitched years ago as a way to simplify family billing, but it quickly became a source of intense household anxiety. Now, as the industry pivots aggressively back toward heavily restricted 'unlimited' tiers in 2019, that anxiety hasn't disappeared; it has merely changed shape. Instead of worrying about massive overage fees at the end of the month, parents are now forced to navigate the complexities of data deprioritization and strict video resolution throttling.
The colossal proposed merger between Sprint and T-Mobile continues to cast a massive shadow over the entire industry this year. The drama playing out in federal courts and the DOJ fundamentally threatens the competitive price war that has benefited consumers so heavily over the last five years.
In a massive $1 billion acquisition, Apple officially bought the majority of Intel's struggling smartphone modem business. Apple positioned the device online, this massive vertical integration guarantees that Apple will eventually build its own proprietary 5G modems, giving them unprecedented, terrifying control over exactly how the iPhone interacts with global cellular networks.
With the AT&T and Time Warner merger fully active, the era of the massive telecom-media conglomerate is fully here. Carriers no longer want to just pipe the data to your phone; they want to own the streaming services you are watching, allowing them to zero-rate their own content and bundle Disney+ or HBO Max to completely lock down your household.
Privacy absolutely took center stage in 2019, with massive investigative reports revealing that major wireless carriers have been routinely selling real-time user location data to third-party aggregators. This data trickled down to bounty hunters and unsavory actors, proving that telecom companies cannot be trusted to self-regulate when lucrative monetization opportunities arise.
So, what does this mean for your bottom line? Sit down and have a frank conversation with your family about their cellular data habits. Utilizing home Wi-Fi and proactively downloading content offline before leaving the house can drastically reduce your reliance on expensive cellular data.
Empower yourself by knowing exactly what your family consumes on a gigabyte level. The more informed you are about your metrics, the significantly less likely you are to overpay a major corporation.