So, yes, as some publications reported and many industry suspected: Sprint will offer unlimited data plans for the iPhone.

"We will be offering the benefit of our unlimited plans that start at just $69.99," spokeswoman Michelle Leff Mermelstein told AllThingsD. Its reason to go against the industry trend of tiered pricing is simple: it wants to differentiate itself from AT&T and Verizon.  It could be enough to give the carrier a much-needed boost in the telecom wars. Verizon Wireless is ranked number one in overall wireless network performance in five of the six US regions analyzed by the J.D. Power and Associates.

Unlimited data, though, won’t be offered indefinitely by Sprint, CNET predicted even before it was confirmed that Sprint would be an Apple carrier. That is because the iPhone consumes data at a heavy rate, which inevitably strains the network — reasons why AT&T and Verizon switched to tiered-pricing.

At most, Sprint will make the offer for a year, Maribel Lopez, an analyst at Lopez Research, told CNET.

RIP Unlimited Data

In short, the days of fixed-price unlimited mobile bandwidth are ending, to marketers' disappointment. What consumer after all will check in with a local business or endlessly play social games from a smartphone or interact with an expensively designed iAd, if it will have an impact on the bill. Bill Shock Still, though, wireless providers - and by extension the companies that use wireless services to promote their own - need to be wary about bill shock among customers.