Sprint to nix ‘unlimited’ from mobile broadband and hotspot plans in November
We'd heard rumblings that unlimited data for Sprint's mobile hotspot plan was going the way of the dodo, but come November folks, it'll be official. Data sent and received over tethering — not smartphone usage — will now be measured against a 5GB cap.
Context & Ripple Effects
Sprint has spent October leaning hard into unlimited data as its wedge against AT&T and Verizon: two weeks ago it confirmed an unlimited-data plan for the iPhone at $69.99, then posted its best sales day ever on the iPhone 4S launch while committing to a costly LTE rebuild across 120 cities. Unlimited smartphone data is the marketing promise carrying that bet.
The fine print is now moving in the other direction. Capping tethered traffic at 5GB echoes the erosion of unlimited mobile broadband that began when Virgin Mobile USA pitched $40 unlimited prepaid broadband back in 2010 — 'unlimited' survives for phones but not for the plans that route a phone's connection to laptops.
First-order effects
- From November, Sprint customers who tether or run a mobile hotspot see their data measured against a 5GB cap, while on-device smartphone usage stays unmetered — the split lands hardest on laptop-and-tablet users who bought Sprint plans for exactly that use case.
Second-order effects
- AT&T and Verizon already meter tethering, so Sprint loses its last pricing edge on hotspot plans; its differentiation narrows to smartphone-only unlimited data, raising pressure to monetize tethering as a separate add-on rather than a bundled perk.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 'unlimited' becomes a device-scoped term across US carriers — carriers redefine it around the traffic they can price, pushing heavy-tether workloads toward fixed broadband or Wi-Fi and making the hotspot line item a permanent profit center as LTE capacity costs come due.
The trend: US carriers are hollowing out 'unlimited' by exempting their highest-bandwidth use cases from the label, with tethering as the first casualty.