Hasta La Gadget!

There are fewer places to go to for consumers seeking access to unlimited data on their smartphones. T-Mobile plans to reduce data speeds for those consumers who use more than 5 GB of data in a single billing cycle, according to the Tmonews website.

The move will kick in this weekend and T-Mobile claims less than 1 percent of its customers will be affected.

T-Mobile’s decision is just a step short of the data caps announced by other wireless carriers. In September, Verizon said it plans to stop selling unlimited data plans to new customers and will, instead, introduce two service plans with monthly data caps. A few months earlier, AT&T decided to retire unlimited 3G-data plans. Sprint has said it will have to reconsider unlimited data for its 4G network if data usage increases significantly.

Consumers today are using their smartphones for more than just voice and e-mail. The rise of social networking sites and mobile video and apps has led to a tremendous increase in the amounts of data being sucked through wireless devices.

Average data consumption increased to 298 MB a month in the first quarter of this year, from about 90 MB a month for the same period last year. That’s a gain of approximately 230 percent in a year, according to research by Nielsen Mobile. And, so far, it hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.

T-Mobile has said only “extreme data users” will feel the pain. The company plans to send text messages warning users about their data speeds if they reach the limit.

This is not the first time T-Mobile has tried to throttle data speeds for power users. Earlier, the company capped usage around 10 GB but it seems to be reducing the threshold now.

For consumers this makes for a difficult choice. They can either get limited data from AT&T and Verizon and pay heavily for exceeding that or get “unlimited” data at T-Mobile and see their data download to a trickle after a certain point. Either way, it’s clear–the days of unlimited data on mobile devices are over.

See Also:

• AT&T Adds iPhone Tethering, Kills Unlimited Data for iPad
• Verizon to End Unlimited-Data Party
• AT&T’s Data Limits Rein In Cloud-Based Media Services
• What AT&T’s Limited Data Plans Mean for You
• Data-Gobbling Android Users Will Likely See Bandwidth Capped

Photo: (Shawn Mclung/Flickr)