What Is My Cap? Understanding Today's Data Plans

I recently came across a website devoted to educating consumers about a few of the most popular wireless companies' data plans. What Is My Cap allows users to select a service provider to learn about that provider's data rates. Once the user has selected a carrier, and meter starts running. This meter counts how much data the user would have consumed if they were downloading at full speed on the carrier's network. For example, in less than 30 minutes of top speed downloading, a Verizon Wireless customer would already hit their 2 GB data cap. At that point the consumer would end up paying $10 / GB.

The site puts data use into perspective for consumers. Although most users don't download at top speeds constantly, many consumer hours of movies, music, and other media on their smartphones monthly. In the user experience survey's that our team conducted, we found that many users have unlimited data plans. These users may feel safe from high fees, but as seen in an earlier post, the time of unlimited data plans will come to an end soon.

What Is My Cap encourages consumers to take action and stay informed about issues related to mobile data usage and billing. Through the continuation of our project we hope to come up with a design that developers could implement relatively easily. Our hope is that consumers can use an application like the one we are designing in order to take matters into their own hands by becoming aware of their own mobile data usage habits.