[ABI]: Multi-tier, Multi-device Shared Plans Allow Price Increase

A new report by Lian Jye Su, Research Associate, and Jake Saunders [pictured], VP and Practice Director for Forecasting, ABI Research, finds that "The aggressive deployment of LTE networks has encouraged higher data consumption .. countries that have a monthly data quota in the range of 8 to 10 GB have increased from 21% in 1Q 2014 to 83% of the total in 2Q 2014.

Facing a downward trend in ARPU, mobile operators are in search of solutions to boost their income. The introduction of multi-tier, multi-device shared plans allow mobile operators to target different customer segments more effectively, and in some cases, increase the price.. This is reflected in an average increase of 11.31% in the monthly tariff in the top 20 markets. In Canada, all three major mobile operators increased their price by US$4.50, despite offering an identical data quota (limit) before the price hike.

On the other hand, all-you-can-eat data plans are slowly disappearing, dropping from 50% in 1Q 2014 to 27.6% in 2Q 2014. Instead of unlimited data plans, major mobile operators in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia are offering multi-device data sharing plans. For example, U.S. Cellular focuses its pricing strategy solely around data sharing plans and has increased its prices significantly" 

See "Mobile Data Sharing Plans are Gaining Popularity, but They Come at a Higher Cost" - here.