7:30 AM -- DUBLIN -- Management World -- Flat–rate, unlimited data plans will soon find a place in the museum of wireless history, which is why one question that keeps popping up here in Dublin is, what will my wireless bill look like in a year's time?

The only definitive answer I've had is 32 pages long.

A lot of pricing vendors and their operator customers are exploring new modes of so-called creative pricing to make tiers and data caps more palatable. Volubill is one such company. It's working with operators across the globe that are either deploying or trialing new pricing schemes with customers. Volubill CEO John Aalbers said there is a common core of 10 to 12 pricing scenarios operators are using, along with a number of off-the-wall experiments such as family pricing plans where children are rewarded with data for every minute the spend talking on the phone to their parents. (See EuroProfile: Volubill.)

All this creativity is great for the cost savings it could bring, but it's made me wonder what a beast that bill could be to decipher every month. Now, as someone who once paid for HBO for a full year without realizing it was on my bill each time, analyzing statements isn't my strong suit, but what kind of user would have the tolerance for a statement that has dozens of line items like this:

Monthly data charge, $50, for 5GB of data…

The bargain shoppers among us might like the challenge of seeing how low we can get our bill through incentives, promos and creative pricing each month, but I think most people will value simplicity, transparency and cost savings above all else.

And, hey, at least it's better than talking megabytes to consumers, but I have to say, thinking about all these scenarios makes me miss those good ol' days of just using however much data I wanted whenever I wanted to.

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Reporter, Light Reading Mobile