It's not unexpected, but it's still frustrating. BusinessWeek is reporting that Verizon will soon end its unlimited data rates for mobile phones.

"We will probably need to change the design of our pricing where it will not be totally unlimited, flat rate," John Killian, chief financial officer of Verizon Communications Inc., the wireless unit's parent, said in an interview at Bloomberg's headquarters in New York today. The company anticipates "explosions in data traffic" over wireless networks as new phones on 4G networks incorporate data- heavy applications, such as video downloads, he said.

DSLReports.com reminds us that, despite Verizon's statements to the contrary, "the desire to impose low caps and overages is about money -- not about altruism, congestion, saving endangered species, or whatever justification AT&T and Verizon use this week." The same is true for AT&T, which introduced tiered pricing just in time for the iPhone 4 introduction.

The biggest problems with AT&T's tiered pricing scheme are additional charges for tethering and exorbitant overage charges. We don't have any details on what Verizon's structure would look like, so we'll reserve judgment until it emerges. But in this broken wireless market, we don't really have a lot of optimism.