Get a clue. Your market segment is an absurd minority, barely a blip on their radar. They’ve enjoyed milking you for years and have clearly identified the increased income from users upgrading their plans as more than enough to offset outliers.

Welcome to statistics 101.

I’m sure they make plenty of money.

What I find interesting.. is that companies have not started increasing the minutes on lower priced plans.. because with $99/unlimited, those bucket of minutes plans now look like a crappy value. So, in theory those customers are now at risk for churn.. but I suspect they’ll do something about that too later this year. If not.. I may be one for ditching my cell phone, because I’m not going up to the $99 plan and yet I’m getting ripped off on a low per minute plan that’s around half the price of the unlimited plan… Probably the lower plans need to double in the size of minutes.. with a base bucket of 700 minutes @ $25.. 1200 @ $35, 1500 @ $50, etc. It’s when customers use more than 1500/month unlimited makes sense anyway. I would see more sense in those prices taking affect than upselling to $99, imho.

What would be nice is the evolution away from selling VOICE minutes to data plans, upon which VOICE operates.. this way all services can operate on “bandwidth” cap constraints.. ie 128kbit symmetric all the way up to 10mbit data plans/unlimited. However the technology & the marketplace just isn’t quite there yet. Possibly in the next 3-4 years this can happen. 3d & LTE are promising to make this a reality.. provided we don’t have this looming recession take hold.

The average consumer gravitates towards perceived bargains; they don’t actually measure their value. A $40/month user with a 1000 minute contract and occasional overages to $75 will clearly bite on $99 “flat rate”, and brag about till the cows come home. They will not do the math, which might show that instead of paying $1200 a year, with some good habits, they could get by on $50 a year with prepaid.

Friends often tell me of their “great deals”, i.e. “my DSL is only $14.95 a month”, but like an adjustable rate mortgage, they fail to mention its a teaser rate for 3 months, then it goes to $39.95 (plus fees and Al Gore tax). People lease cars “for only $199 a month”, though the real cost of ownership is closer to $1K.

“Unlimited” dialing plans will be a net revenue generator for all cellcos, even if some smug “premium” accountholders see it as a discount over their existing trickle-down accounts.

“The burden is still on the carriers to keep on thinking of ways by which they can create revenue.”

Is the flat rate plan that way? I have no idea, Malik thinks not, but we’ll find out soon enough.

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This is good for business. And no, that does not mean that voice ARPUs go up.

ARPUs are going down, irrespective. And voice is a commodity. This makes new customer acquisition easier and reduces churn.