Prices for cell phone voice services may be dropping, but consumers are likely to be forced to pay a lot more for mobile Internet data plans in the future.
It's no secret that the price of voice services for cell phones is falling. Just last week Sprint Nextel announced it was offering a new $69.99 a month, Any Mobile, Anytime plan that allows subscribers to call any cell phone in the U.S., regardless of the carrier, in addition to such things as unlimited text messaging and data services.
Analysts are predicting a price war in the mobile market as national wireless carriers will soon be forced to offer more minutes of voice service or unlimited voice services for equal or lower prices to compete with each other.
To make up for the shortfall in revenue, these analysts also predict that wireless operators will start reconfiguring Internet data service plans to make up the difference.
"Voice revenue is declining for the carriers," said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. "And the vision for the future is to use data revenue to make up for the shortfall and to kick ARPU (average revenue per user) into growth mode."
Data usage is already on the rise, and wireless operators are cashing in. For the second quarter of 2009, AT&T reported a 37.2 percent increase in wireless data revenue to $3.4 billion, more than double the total for the same period two years earlier. This usage included messaging, Internet access, access to applications and related services. Verizon Wireless said that its data revenue jumped to over 52 percent to $3.9 billion during the second quarter of 2009.
While text messaging is still a big component of data revenue, which carriers also charge a premium for, Web access is also on the rise. This growth is likely being driven by the sale of more smartphones. Smartphone sales increased 27 percent in the second quarter of 2009, while total handset sales fell 6 percent, according to Gartner. But it's also due to the fact that more people want to do more things with their phones. CCS Insight concluded after a recent survey that the biggest drivers for Web use on mobile devices is accessing social networking sites like Facebook and microblogging sites such as Twitter.
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