This month I dropped both my unlimited data plans in favor of a shared data plan on both Verizon (Galaxy Note 2) and ATT (Nokia 920).

What I paid before the plan change and what I pay after is about the same with the exception that the shared data plans allow me to add low data users (such as my Mom) to my contract without buying them a separate data plan (for data they’re likely to not fully consume).

There are some other reasons –

My reasoning:

Unless you’re regularly watching video via 3G/4G – you shouldn’t be coming close to going over any type of limit (I rarely went over 1 GB)
Shared data plans allow you to add up to 10 people who all share the data
Tablets can be added – typically for $10 per month (no contract so you can remove them at any time)
The shared plans on Verizon and ATT allow you to use your phone as a WIFI hotspot for NO extra charge. Yes, the data is all charged to your account but as someone who does not use that much data I find it VERY handy to be able to sometimes use my phone as a hotspot without having to pay $20-$30 extra per month for a separate plan.
The shared data plans also offer unlimited phone/text
With my ATT plan the cost was really close to the same as my shared data (4 GB) which is about $110/mo + fees.
LTE speeds on Verizon and ATT are now well over the speed of my home Internet (again YMMV for those who are blessed with fiber). Using these phones as a wifi hotspot is now very reliable and fast. Definitely a plus if you bring your laptop to a customer site.
Most of the “unlimited” plans have some type of soft cap in place where they have the right to throttle you somewhere in the 5 GB range. This doesn’t always happen but don’t fool yourself into thinking that unlimited means unlimited. There are lots of gotchas which mean you are probably not going to be tethering your unlimited plan phone from home and using 20 GB streaming HULU.

If you’re tasked with providing content for your company’s social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and you’ve struggled with keeping the status updates spaced out throughout the day rather than all in one big clump of posts at 8am (or whenever you typically create updates) – then here’s a tool you MUST review.

Buffer is a service that allows you to share status updates to your Buffer account and in turn create a time schedule to spread those updates over the day.

I’ve been using this service for about a year and it’s completely solved the issue of information overload where I’d create a dozen status updates in the morning, head off to work (and my social accounts would become silent) and then create another dozen updates when I returned from work.

With Buffer I save status updates to my account which in turn are distributed on a time schedule which I’ve selected.

Buffer costs $ 10 per month, supports up to 12 social accounts (Facebook, Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn) and up to two users who feed it status updates.

Virtually all of my status updates are sent right from my Chrome Browser Plug-In that allows me to specify which of the social accounts that I want to share updates to.

Updates may also be created via the web site or through integrations in popular iOS apps such as Reeder, Zite and others.

Well worth the $10 monthly fee for anyone managing multiple social media accounts.

Buffer

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