All four major U.S. carriers once again have an unlimited LTE data plan. For some of us, this is great news: The folks who use upwards of 10GB of data on a line they pay for themselves found plenty of creative ways to hold on to older unlimited data plans, and sometimes that could be a hassle. Now they are available with a click of the mouse. Unlimited plans coming back are a direct result of tough competition in the industry. This wasn't unexpected, really. Companies like T-Mobile and StraightTalk made people notice the cost vs. value proposition of a cell phone data plan. AT&T and Verizon enjoyed a consumer mindset that they offered something superior when for many, alternatives could be just as good. When people started to take notice of that, it was time for a small shake-up. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines People who will utilize an unlimited data plan and get their money's worth are outliers. Everyone can have a month where they are traveling or otherwise away from Wi-Fi and use a good chunk of data, but when you look at the numbers telling how much data is used per person on average, you see that most people would be better served with a cheaper plan that offers a capped data allotment. The numbers back this up. According to a late-2018 survey in 2018, the average amount of data used per person per month was about 6 GB if they had an unlimited data plan. That's up about 2.5 GB from a similar survey done in 2015, but still well within the range of cheaper limited data plans offered by wireless carriers. During the same time period, customers who didn't choose an unlimited plan used 1.6 GB per month on average. The numbers vary a good bit when you break them down by carrier. Verizon customers used only 3.98 GB per month on average, AT&T users check in at 4.06 GB per month on average, Sprint users average 5.4 GB per month and T-Mobile users come in at 5.78 GB. These are totals for all subscribers, not just those with unlimited data plans. Why this is important

These are average numbers. That means that some people will be wildly outside the average on both ends: You might use 100GB of data per month but someone who uses 0.1GB per month offsets your input towards the average. An average can't predict the highest amounts of data being used (or the lowest) but it is a great way to determine how much data the average person uses each month. There's a lot of ways this data can be used and of course multiple ways it can be interpreted. For example, the average data a customer with access to an unlimited data plan uses isn't dramatically different from the amount someone without access to unlimited data is using. Americans use about 15 GB per month if you factor in Wi-Fi usage. This means that the average person, regardless of network, doesn't need to pay for an expensive unlimited data plan. Unlimited plans are hypefests that get everyone talking about something as mundane and boring as a cellular provider. The hope is that you'll decide you need to sign up for one even though you don't need one. Sure, you might use a little more each month knowing that you have an unlimited plan, but generally, people who weren't using a large amount of data before aren't going to be using a lot of data after they switch. Old habits and all that. None of this matters to the phone company. It has one goal: to make money. That's how business work. Every decision, every promotion, every marketing campaign and everything else is a way to try and make more money. A company won't be around for long if they aren't trying to bank a profit. And sometimes, how that profit can be shown on a quarterly earnings report matters as much as the amount that goes into the bank. The ARPU