Lighter users might find they actually can save money by switching plans. Lots of non-users who believe they are likely to be light users will benefit. Moderate users will have to think about whether to keep their unlimited $30 plans or switch to the $25 plan.
The clearest impact will be on new users signing up starting June 7, as the difference between the unlimited plan and the 2-Gbyte plan will mean users will likely wind up snacking on video rather than feasting. That doesn't mean actual behavior even under the old plan would have been much different. Users likely were mostly snacking, to begin with.
It's just that the 2-Gbyte cap will encourage people to watch their video consumption more closely.
And that likely is modestly bad news for the mobile video industry, to the extent that revenues are based on subscriptions or advertising. In the first case it will be harder to sell a recurring subscription service when users are not sure what it will cost to use the service, in terms of bandwidth charges.
In the latter case people will be watching less video, therefore being exposed to fewer ads, and resulting in less activity that can be monetized.
Even AT&T's high-end, $25 monthly plan, including 2 GB of bandwidth, can be used up in less than a day of watching video. And while AT&T's $10 per GByte overage charges are much more reasonable than previous industry charges, they're still unlikely to be popular.
A two-hour movie, even compressed, could use upwards of 500 MBytes of data. that could mean variable and unexpected charges, and consumers hate that.
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