AT&T’s decision to cancel its all-you-can-eat smartphone data plan option surely had a reason. You can always argue whether it was the company’s intention to save you some money and attract more customers by offering cheaper plans or if the company wanted to simply protect itself from overly active iPhone 4 users who are taking advantage from all the bandwidth that is available. Nielsen has published some numbers that shed some light on the speculation and, in fact, prove that the data cap may not be the worst thing that is happening to AT&T customers, at least for now.

Going from all the data you are able to download and upload to a 200 MB or 2 GB cap obviously raises eyebrows, looks painful and suspicious. The awkward timing of the announcement, just days before the introduction of the iPhone 4 did not help and certainly did not make AT&T’s PR staff look like geniuses. We, and that includes me, were quick to sentence AT&T as being driven by greed and trying to find a way to cash in on the data trend. It’s difficult to dismiss this allegation entirely, but there are some new numbers that show that 99% of smartphone users will actually benefit from the tiered pricing plan.

Based on a review of 60,000 phone bills, Nielsen’s Roger Entner found that smartphone data usage is, in fact, increasing. The average monthly data consumption jumped from about 90 MB in January 2009 to about 298 MB in January 2010. However, the average number may be somewhat confusing as there are a number of users who are downloading/uploading a lot and there are many who aren’t downloading/uploading anything. According to Nielsen, 6% of smartphone users consume half of all data.

25% of smartphone users consume less than 1 MB of data. Another 25% do not use any data service, despite the fact that they have signed up for such a plan and pay for it. They use their smartphone only for voice calls and messaging. Nielsen criticized the carriers for this scenario and urged them to do a much better job educating their customers. But perhaps those carriers aren’t so unhappy with customers who are paying for a service they don’t really need. Needless to say, those 50% of users who consume hardly any data will easily benefit from cheaper plans with bandwidth caps – at least for now.

Nielsen also said that a third of smartphone users have not signed up for any data plan. These users have purchased their smartphones at a time when no data plan was required for these phones. They will be converted over time, but the issue remains that carriers will need to educate them what they can actually do with their smartphones.

So, if we believe Nielsen, then the bandwidth cap is almost a non issue and just a way to tame the most active data users in a similar way as it is done with desktop broadband connection caps. The bandwidth discussion has clearly trickled down into the mobile space in a time when mobile data needs incentive for growth and not a roadblock down the road. As we become more familiar with smartphones, data usage will grow and it is a matter of time until the caps will be exceeded. In some way, the argument that we don’t need 2 GB of data today is somewhat used to sugarcoat and distract from the issue that cell phone carriers are realizing that data has some unrealized revenue opportunities and voice services will be commoditized over time.

What is missing in Nielsen’s data set is a separation of phone models. There are clumsy smartphones that do not promote data usage, while the iPhone is certainly a very data centric device. It is easy to imagine that iPhone users or Android users consume more data than the average user of other smartphones – and that AT&T and other carriers need to find a way to protect themselves from users who are willing to download thousands of applications to cellphones that can store more data than many mainstream, PCs just seven or eight years ago.

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