Sprint Still Committed to Unlimited Data Plans

Sprint's Chief Technology Officer told the attendees at a technology conference yesterday that his company is going to continue to offer unlimited data plans to its customers for the foreseeable future.

Stephen Bye was was speaking at the GigaOm Mobilize conference when he made this pronouncement. he went on to say that Sprint views its willingness to offer all-you-can-eat data to subscribers as a differentiator. This is because the other members of the Big Four U.S. carriers have moved to tiered data plans, and stopped allowing new customers to sign up for their unlimited ones.

Bye said "There's clearly a cost to support unlimited", but pointed out there are also hidden savings, too. Among these is support -- telling customers they can use as much data as they want is much easier than explaining tiered data plans to them.

A Sigh of Relief
There had been questions about how committed Sprint was to unlimited data after a recent announcement that it is capping the amount of data that customers can transfer when using their smartphone as a modem for another computer.  

In addition, unconfirmed reports have indicated that this carrier will finally be able to offer the Apple iPhone next month. Users of this smartphone generally transfer unusually large amounts of data, and some have wondered if Sprint would put a data cap on them in order to prevent them from overwhelming its network.