It’s been a weird week in the world of major cell providers. After years of moving away from offering unlimited plans after the rise of data-hungry smartphones, Verizon announced out of the blue on Sunday that it would be offering a new unlimited plan to customers again. T-Mobile, who had previously led the way by removing tiered data back in January, updated its own unlimited plan to match. The move was followed by Sprint and AT&T by the end of the week.

Verizon’s unexpected move in offering unlimited data — for the first time since discontinuing the plan back in 2011 — seems to be the factor that caused the rest of the carriers to follow suit. But the question remains: why? Verizon has famously spent the past several years doing…

Continue reading…