Sprint Now the Only U.S. Carrier With an Unlimited Data Plan

Hard-core smartphone users who are looking for an unlimited wireless data plan have to check out Sprint, as this is the last of the top carriers in the United States who will let subscribers exchange as much data as they want.

At one point, all of the big four wireless carriers had unlimited plans, but most of them have now instituted data caps or switched to tiered data plans. Sprint, on the other hand, still has a plan that is unlimited.

This data plan includes unlimited web surfing, email, BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS), and even Sprint TV and Radio.

Within Reason
Although Sprint does not put a cap on how much data users can exchange over its network, it does prohibit certain activities. However, these are not the sort of things regular users are going to do.

According to this carrier's terms of service:

Our data services may not be used:

(i) to generate excessive amounts of Internet traffic through the continuous, unattended streaming, downloading or uploading of videos or other files or to operate hosting services including, but not limited to, web or gaming hosting;

(ii) to maintain continuous active network connections to the Internet such as through a web camera or machine-to-machine connections that do not involve active participation by a person

Lots to Offer
Sprint offers an array of smartphones with Google's Android OS and RIM's BlackBerry OS. This includes devices like the Samsung Intercept and the BlackBerry Bold 9650.

The carrier also has a 4G network using the WiMAX standard, and several smartphones that can connect to it, such as the HTC EVO 4G and the Samsung Epic 4G.

Rival Carrier Plans
AT&T was the first carrier to move to tiered data plans and start phasing out its unlimited data plan. When it made the switch, it allowed current subscribers to keep their unlimited plans, but new customers have to get plans with either 2 GB or 200 MB of data transfers.

T-Mobile has an "unlimited" data plan, but users who transfer over 5 GB of data in a single month have their service slowed down for the remainder of their current billing cycle.

Verizon also still has an "unlimited" data plan, but it recently instituted a soft cap on how much data its subscribers can transfer each month. The top 5% of data users on the network can have their bandwidth slowed down for not only the remainder of the current billing cycle, but also the following one. This summer, Verizon is switching to tiered data plans.