Editorial: How to stop the choking of mobile phone contracts

So we've all probably notice all the major phone carriers recede from unlimited data plans, opting instead to tell consumers to resort to their home wi-fi networks and use the 250mb (on average) of data they receive on their contract 'as a back-up.'

There is, however, an option to this: we take it all back to how contracts were.

Pay for what you use.  Charge by the minute, by the text, by the megabyte.  Sounds scary doesn't it.  Allow us a moment of your time for an explanation.  We're not talking about the gargantuan fees they charge per measure of unit after you exceed your contract limits in the average month, such an idea would be moronic.  Rather, set brackets in correlation with how much they normally cost on your average phone contract (250 minutes, 500 texts and 100 mb internet on an O2 contract for £15p/m, works out at mere decimals of a penny per unit), and allow the consumer to set a limit that they'd be willing to pay.  Kind of like a pay as you go format; but a contractual agreement, allowing for a subsidy of the phone to be paid every month alongside what you use.  

So what would come of this?  It could end the necessity of setting boundaries, as those who express annoyance at limits but never actually come anywhere near to exceeding them (me) will activate a sense of self-control in what they use, and those with necessary needs for large amounts of data can accure accountability.  It's giving a responsibility to phone consumers at a time when that responsibility seems kind of 'not up to the consumer.'  Or it'd fail miserably, either way it'll never happen, either to a mistake of us all, or to the benefit.  We think too much.