U.S. Cellular, the sixth largest carrier in the country, is considering following in AT&T’s and Verizon’s footsteps by moving to tiered data plans. The carrier says that it will launch its tiered data plans within the next two or three quarters, but didn’t specify a date or pricing schemes. Given the competitive nature of the wireless space, U.S. Cellular’s tiered data plans may mirror those of AT&T and Verizon, whose top-end data packages are capped at 2GB before additional charges are incurred.
U.S. Cellular continues to see subscriber loss as well, so the removal of unlimited data might be necessary and cost-effective, but it certainly won’t win any favors from its user base.
FierceWireless reports:
Subscriber losses continued to plague the carrier, however, and U.S. Cellular CEO Mary Dillon said on the company’s earnings conference call that the quarter was “mixed” and subscriber results were “disappointing.” However, she noted a growing number of customers migrating to the carrier’s Belief Project plans, and said these customers are spending more money on data services. The carrier ended the period with 2.3 million Belief Project customers.
However, the carrier has improved its smartphone line-up, adding a few high-end Android devices, but it hasn’t been enough to stave off subscriber losses. Here are the figures broken down from U.S. Cellular’s second quarter:
U.S. Cellular reported net subscriber losses of 58,000 retail customers, which included a loss of 41,000 postpaid customers and 17,000 prepaid customers. The company said postpaid customers comprised 95 percent of retail customers at the end of the quarter. U.S. Cellular served 5.64 million total customers at the end of the quarter.
Its position in the wireless industry may be further reduced if the controversial AT&T and T-Mobile merger is approved by the government, so here’s to hoping that, for the sake of U.S. Cellular users, that the carrier can cut subscriber losses and start seeing positive net gains in the coming few quarters.