[delackner]

The japanese market pricing provides a sensible alternative: Scaled pricing with a reasonable limit.

You pay a minimum monthly price up to a certain cap, and any usage over that cap scales your total bill linearly up to a maximum total bill, beyond which your usage is effectively unlimited. The minimum is about $15 and the maximum is about $50. Not exactly going to break the bank, and totally reasonable.

Metered usage is not evil, people just need reasonable assurances that their bill has a safe ceiling.

[detst]

I'd be happy with that pricing if it didn't restrict tethering.

Verizon requires a $60 plan for tethering, even if you use very little and restricts it to 5GB (pay twice as much for less bandwidth). This scaled pricing would allow you to tether and pay little if you use little. Obviously, there are ways around this, if that's your thing.

[harisenbon]

E-mobile's pocket-wifi plan starts at 350yen a month and goes up to about 4980yen. They even come with a free wifi connector and the first 3 months a 1000yen off.

While they're not a cellphone carrier, they are highly competitive when it comes to ubiquitous wifi.

[bluedanieru]

With Docomo the amount of data you need to consume to hit that max is quite low, however. Less than 100MB. I assume it's the same for Softbank. The pricing is geared toward customers that use the network for email and browsing shitty iMode sites like Mixi on a tiny screen.

Docomo and Google have done very little to promote Android here, by the way. In one year I've seen one device other than my own, and it was the same model (the HTC Magic, one of the few models you can get).

Great network here for voice and especially data, but it mostly goes to waste.

[delackner]

Yikes, I looked up the specific values involved for softbank (as they are the exclusive iPhone carrier) and the $10 usage is roughly 1.5 mb. The max-ed out usage is.... 8.5mb.

The current values in the scale are clearly a bit antiquated, but the concept seems like a good one.