Verizon wants 25% more money for 1000% less service

[Mr Bean]

Verizon and the lack of data plans
More on my setup after the break

Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless carrier, is overhauling its service plans, replacing the entire lineup with a new set that focuses on devices sharing a bucket of data.

Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

A pedestrian talks on a cellphone as she walks by a Verizon Wireless store in New York City.

The new "Share Everything" plans, to be sold starting June 28, will raise prices for data users but include unlimited voice minutes and text, as well as a capped data allotment for up to 10 devices. For new customers, these plans will replace its current tiered pricing plans that charge based on the amount of voice minutes and data consumed.

AT&T will introduce device-sharing plans later this year. T-Mobile has said it will not offer such plans.


Under the new pricing plan, a smartphone customer opting for the cheapest data bucket, 1 gigabyte, will pay $90 before taxes and fees ($40 for phone access and $50 for 1 GB). Customers can add a basic phone, laptop and tablet to share data for $30, $20 and $10, respectively.

Under its current plans, the cheapest data plan for a smartphone costs $70 ($40 for 450 minutes of voice and $30 for 2 GB of data).

The data allotments come in six buckets, ranging from $50 for 1 GB to $100 for 10 GB. The Mobile Hotspot service, which turns the phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot router, is free.

Verizon will sell two packages for those who use little to no data — a $40 plan (700 minutes, 25-cents-a-text and no data) and an $80 plan (300 MB of data and unlimited voice and text).

The options available to you will depend on your customer status as of June 28.

•New customer: A new customer must select from an option in the "Share Everything" plan or either of the two voice-centric packages ($40 or $80).

•Tiered-pricing customer: A tiered-pricing plan customer can upgrade by selecting either a "Share Everything" plan or an option in the current tiered plans.

•Unlimited data customer: If you're one of a dwindling number of customers who retained the grandfathered $30-a-month unlimited data plan, you must choose either a "Share Everything" plan or a tiered pricing plan when upgrading. Verizon dropped the unlimited plans for new customers last year.

The move is a reflection of shifting consumer habits. Fewer calls are made, while videos and audio take up much of the carriers' capacity. "They're giving you more of what you don't want, which is voice," says Rich Karpinski, an analyst at Yankee Group.

That nearly all adult Americans now have a cell phone also motivated Verizon to act, Karpinski says. "The game has changed to getting multiple devices to the network."

Well it looks like I'm going to be holding onto my phone pretty much forever since I can't afford to pay the 300$ a month my current usage would cost me for the 64.99$ a month I'm paying now. At the moment I'm an "unlimited (In actually it's a 100 gig limit) customer who typically uses up about 30% of my monthly minutes and about eight to forty gigs of data a month. More when I'm traveling as I use my smartphone to tether to my laptop for internet. In order to get a comparable plan to the one I have now I have to start at 140$ and hope I don't go over 10 gigs. It's easy to do so when your using your cell for backup internet. In fact looking at my options it might be cheaper to buy two different phones and two separate data plans rather than a single phone with an extra large data plan and get it as a family plan on a corporate account so I can have ten gigs spread between two plans.

I hate this with a passion because as pointed out when the first 4G phones hit the scene it was possible to run over a gig cap in little over an hour of downloading at full 4G speeds. Meaning you can use your monthly allotment in half a day. Surprised we don't see phone viruses out there designed to do nothing but download junk data to get thousands of dollars of overage charges yet.

But I'm getting further afield, the point is I can either never upgrade and hope sanity is restored or upgrade and instantly triple my phone bill.

[Mr Bean]

Here is a link to a four minute APM Marketplace report which includes and awesome interview with Verizon.
First three minutes only
Transcript is on the webpage, I'll include portions here.

Karen Smith: We think that people need to go to a usage-based model for data and pay for the amount of usage that they're using so that everybody is able to access the network.

Moe: So is it a matter of being afraid that you're going to run out of room on the network if people are on unlimited plans?

Smith: No, not at all. In fact, that's one of the reasons that we so aggressively keep expanding our 4G LTE network which is an overlay to our existing 3G network.

Smith: We made a decision to change our pricing model, and what we've done is we've allowed people to share data among a number of devices regardless of how many people are on the plan, it's a device model. And we're charging on the megabytes of data that they use.

Moe: Why?
Ed (Note there is a eight second pause before Smith responds)

Smith: People have changed the usage of how they're using their devices. They're moving to using more data, and to ensure the speed and reliability and the access to the network, people are paying for the amount of data that they use.

[Terralthra]

Glad I got a Galaxy Nexus at the beginning of the year. It will be a while before I need to upgrade and lose my unlimited-data plan.

[noncredible]

These plans looks horrible. In Canada, with Rogers Pay As You Go, I get unlimited texting, unlimited calling between 3PM-6PM and $0.25 per minute otherwise, and 100MB of data for $20, with an additional $0.25/MB over the limit. For $45, I get the same except with 500MB and $0.05/MB over the limit.

(Plus, since it's PAYG, I can't get enormous bills.)

[muse]

My boss swears by Virgin Mobile's unlimited data plan. He has the $35 unlimited plan and setup his phone to use skype for making calls so that he doesn't exhaust his voice minutes.

[Lord Relvenous]

So glad my unlimited data was grandfathered in.

[Terralthra]

So glad my unlimited data was grandfathered in.

Gone the next time you upgrade your phone, though.

[fgalkin]

Unless he pays the whole price for it. It may be worth it in the long term. Those $300-400 extra are just a few months' bill.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Raj Ahten]

Bullshit like this is why I never got a smartphone. The data plans are simply hideously expensive and I've found I can wait until I get to a hardline for my internet use. But then I'm not expected to be checking email every second of the day (Hell I don't even have computer access at work but now supervise five people. Go figure.)

[Phantasee]

Rogers went to this kind of shared data bucket pricing, but didn't charge nearly as much for it near as i can tell. 4G rollout is starting to make its mark, Edmonton has service over downtown now.

We're probably going to end up paying more than you guys, soon enough.

[Zaune]

I'm not defending Verizon here, but how the hell do you get through forty gigabytes in a single month?

[Mr Bean]

I'm not defending Verizon here, but how the hell do you get through forty gigabytes in a single month?

Did you miss the part where I said I was using my phone to provide tethering services for my laptop? IE when I'm out and about I use my phone to provide broadband internet for my phone. I'm in a hotel and que up a movie on Netflix in HD and that's two gigs right there. If I download a database onto my laptop while traveling that's 500 megs to four gigs there. And when I'm not using it to tether I'm using Pandora... constantly. If I'm in the car my phone is streaming Pandora to the speakers. That's 36 megs an hour which over a month is another gig.

[Lord Relvenous]

So glad my unlimited data was grandfathered in.

Gone the next time you upgrade your phone, though.

I have upgraded my phone multiple times. The last phone I got was completely free with 2 year extension of my current contract and my unlimited data continues. It helps that I piggy back on my parents' business account with something like 15 cell phones.

[weemadando]

I'm finding it hilarious that Australia is now leaps and bounds ahead of the US in phone and internet pricing.

I pay 40pm, no contract, for unlimited calls and texts and 4gb of data with a decent whack of the content (social networks) unmetered.

[Guardsman Bass]

It makes sense that they're trying to phase out the unlimited plans, and moving towards "all-data" plans. All the big carriers are getting slammed by rapidly increasing traffic due to the onset of smartphones, with AT & T saying that their wireless data traffic has grown by 20,000% in five years. On top of that, voice traffic (aka phone calls) is rapidly shrinking in importance, and people often use outside applications such as Skype and third-party texting applications to communicate.

[Phantasee]

That would be a dream deal here in Canada. We're used to being shafted harder than everybody else in the OECD now.

[Zaune]

Did you miss the part where I said I was using my phone to provide tethering services for my laptop?

No, I did indeed spot that part. It's just that I barely use a quarter of that a month, and I have an actual wired broadband connection that has a remote chance of downloading a high-def video file in less than half an hour. But then maybe you have better coverage where you are, because when I was still on mobile broadband it was a good day when I got 150kb/s.

[Lonestar]

Verizon has pretty good LTE voerage brosef. I belive I get around 5mb/s with my Bionic

[Executor32]

I, too, have a Galaxy Nexus, to which I upgraded in April (as luck would have it, two days before LTE was expanded to my area) and on which I thankfully have grandfathered unlimited data. I usually get around 12 Mbps (up and down) when I'm on LTE, and usually 1 Mbps or so on 3G. In the two months I've had it, I've averaged around 7 GB per month just browsing, watching YouTube videos and sometimes Netflix, and only when I'm either away from home or on the shitter. Given my unlimited data plan and seeing as my LTE signal is -94 bDm (full bars, IOW) when I'm at home, I don't bother turning on WiFi.

[Pu-239]

Sitting on your phone still means you're paying the carrier subsidy w/o getting a new device for your money, so you have to weigh in your usage carefully and see if you actually need the unlimited... clearly Bean needs the unlimited though...

I don't like defending Verizon, but 40GB on 3/4g is quite high, and all carriers except maybe Sprint/Clear WiMax have had a clause prohibiting tethering since forever anyway unless you're paying for that separately, and almost always with a cap (enforcement may vary). A hotspot plan or something is probably more appropriate for this kind of use case. Then again, if you have unlimited, might as well use it and avoid the extra charge until they shut you down *shrug*.




I'm currently paying 85$ pre-tax for a 1000-minute family plan w/ 2 data 1 voice-only line on T-Mobile w/ no phone subsidy, but t-mobile's coverage is... limited in nonsuburban areas, interiors of large buildings due to crappy building penetration, etc. Where I usually am though, it's decent around 5Mb/s, w/ a cap of 2GB per phone, w/ overages throttled to 2g speeds.

I use wifi whenever I can though since I've found it reduces battery usage when one has applications that are waking up the radio in the background to send data. Haven't been streaming pandora

[Terralthra]

So glad my unlimited data was grandfathered in.

Gone the next time you upgrade your phone, though.

I have upgraded my phone multiple times. The last phone I got was completely free with 2 year extension of my current contract and my unlimited data continues. It helps that I piggy back on my parents' business account with something like 15 cell phones.

Yes, this announcement states rather clearly that they're no longer going to grandfather in the unlimited plans.

The options available to you will depend on your customer status as of June 28.

•New customer: A new customer must select from an option in the "Share Everything" plan or either of the two voice-centric packages ($40 or $80).

•Tiered-pricing customer: A tiered-pricing plan customer can upgrade by selecting either a "Share Everything" plan or an option in the current tiered plans.

•Unlimited data customer: If you're one of a dwindling number of customers who retained the grandfathered $30-a-month unlimited data plan, you must choose either a "Share Everything" plan or a tiered pricing plan when upgrading. Verizon dropped the unlimited plans for new customers last year.

Emphasis mine.

[AMT]

So glad my unlimited data was grandfathered in.

Gone the next time you upgrade your phone, though.

I have upgraded my phone multiple times. The last phone I got was completely free with 2 year extension of my current contract and my unlimited data continues. It helps that I piggy back on my parents' business account with something like 15 cell phones.

Same with ATT.
Changed from a Blackberry to iPhone and they grandfathered my data plan in.

[houser2112]

What I'd like to know is how Verizon can justify charging for texts and other one-way data transfers, but voice is essentially free (a technical reason; I know the real answer is "because they can")? A text message is a tiny amount of data going in one direction, but a phone call is 2-way audio data, which requires orders of magnitude more bandwidth.

[Zanfib]

[youtube]www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuqmKg6QQT[/youtube]

Seems to be relevent.

[noncredible]

My boss swears by Virgin Mobile's unlimited data plan. He has the $35 unlimited plan and setup his phone to use skype for making calls so that he doesn't exhaust his voice minutes.

The city-only providers usually have dirt-cheap plans. Mobilicity had a $40 unlimited-fucking-everything plan IIRC.