A vehicle includes a plurality of telematics control units (TCUs) and a processor. The vehicle may use the processor to consider vehicle variables, responsive to a data transfer request, including power usage constraints, data usage over a billing cycle for each carrier associated with a given TCU, and transfer timing requirements for a given data transfer request. Based on the considered variables, the vehicle may select at least one controlling variable and select at least one of the TCUs based on at least a value of the controlling variable, then use the selected TCU to fulfil the data transfer request.