The Nature of Rollover Minutes

If there was a trade market for cell phone minutes, I’d most certainly see financial success. As proof of an ever-growing shift away from phone-based audio communication to text-based messaging, I present to you, Reader, the past six months of my iPhone’s rollover minute data.

I subscribe to the lowest minute plan available on AT&T (400 minutes + unlimited weekend), and as you can discern in the table below, I use on average about 158 of those minutes (just under 40% of my plan’s allotment). At that rate, rollover minutes (the unused portion per month that is added to the available base package of 400 the next month) accumulate quite quickly. So quickly that I never will even touch them, especially considering that they depreciate over time (They expire after a set number of months).

As smartphones continue to pave forward with more accessible technologies (like VOIP and text messaging services like BBM and iMessage), we as consumers have decreasing interest in paying for services like audio minute plans and text message plans. Telecommunications companies will become simply data providers.

Notes

1. pauljwilliams posted this