As advanced as our smartphones are these days, they’re also severely limited if you happen to have a wireless carrier that offers tiered data plans, instead of offering an unlimited data plan. One of the activities many mobile consumers keep an eye on is their video streaming services as watching something on YouTube or Netflix could certainly cost them to go over their allotted monthly data. ESPN is looking into offering a better solution for its customers so they can watch videos on its service without worrying about being charged overage fees.
According to The Wall Street Journal, ESPN has reportedly spoken to at least one major U.S. carrier about subsidizing data plans in order to guarantee its streaming content would not result in data plan overage charges if viewed on a device that has a tiered data plan. The way ESPN would subsidize its users’ data plans would either be paying carriers outright, or giving them a piece of their advertising revenue.
If ESPN is able to strike a deal with at least one of the major U.S. carriers that offer tiered data plans, this could certainly make the other one want to also move in on offering ESPN’s deal to its customers. Or, AT&T and Verizon can just end the nonsense of tiered data subscriptions and go back to the good ole days of unlimited data plans.
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