Of course, from Verizon's perspective it's understandable why the carrier would want to impose some kind of bandwidth caps on their 4G services. Since most voice calls on LTE-capable phones are projected to be made over a VoIP network and not a standard cellular network, carriers will lose the revenues they used to get through minute-based cellular plans.

Additionally, carriers are also worried that allowing unlimited data consumption on their LTE networks will lead to degraded network performance. This may sound paradoxical since 4G networks will undoubtedly deliver much faster speeds than today's 3G networks, but consider that the relative slowness of 3G compared to fixed broadband connections means that very few users are trying to stream long high-definition videos or use bandwidth-intensive peer-to-peer protocols on their 3G connections. Once more users have the ability to use such applications over a 4G connection, however, carriers fear that such high-bandwidth applications will severely degrade network performance if left unchecked.

Unsurprisingly, Verizon's proposed tiered LTE plans are not without their critics. Blogger Mike over at GadgetSteria predicted that the limited LTE data plans would become a way for carriers to bilk consumers by continuing to garner overage charges even as the cost of transmitting data for the carrier goes down.

"On the surface, it seems to make sense and be 'fair' -- charge heavier users for the larger amount of data they use," he wrote. "They only problem is that 4G will make transmitting data cheaper than 3G. Not only that, but the high-end 4G data plan should never be more than $30-$40. I guarantee that carriers will milk customers for all their [sic] worth."

Kevin Krauss, writing at , warned readers to "kiss your unlimited data goodbye" and attacked Verizon's reasoning for placing data caps on its 4G network.