Verizon Wireless Launches Shared Data Plans

Your thoughts mirror mine exactly.

Unless you have 3 or more phones that use little to no data per month or are enticed by the unlimited minutes, you are settings yourself up to pay more for less.

2 phones trying to eek by on the 2GB plan would wind up paying $5/month more if they go over that shared 2GB.

Better viewable info.

WHat about the individual plans?

CNET seems to have some wrong info, like saying that currently it's $50 for 2GB which is not true. It's $30 for 2GB. There is supposed to be a different pricing structure for individual plans yet CNET seems to take the shared plans and apply them to an individual which makes no sense based on the current prices. I currently pay $70 for unlimited text, data, video etc and 450 minutes of talk. If Verizon is actually trying to raise the price to $100 then they are crazy. I only get a $10 discount for bundling my cellular with TV, Digital Voice and internet. So if they are truly trying to raise the prices this much for an individual then I would be crazy to stay when my contract is up in 2014.

CNET seems to be wrong about a lot of stuff as of late. They were wrong about the Motorola Droid Razr getting the ICS update today.

My increase would be about $40 per month with the new plan. However, I have read elsewhere that you can keep your old plan if: 1) You do not change your phone or 2) You pay full price for a new phone.

That is correct. If you do not upgrade your account with a new phone, it stays as is and you go 'month to month' keeping your old plan. I don't ever plan on buying a new phone ever again so I can keep the unlimited data plan. I might be a couple of years behind on the latest phone, but I don't care.

So ...if this is right it's 90 bucks for a single standard phone and one whole gig of data?

Have they lost their fuggin minds?

"When developing these plans, we first asked customers what they wanted in a wireless service plan," says Verizon Wireless of the shift.

Did he mean to say "shaft" instead?

LOL, why yes I believe he did.

Anytime they are charging more than $4 (extremely generous to Verizon) for an additional GB it is definitely the shaft.

Agreed, when I can get 10GB lines at a datacenter for .30/mbps and a MBPS translates to roughly 3.3TB of data you can see were getting the shaft.

I'm not going to defend Verizon's pricing as it looks bloody extortionate, but why is datacentre pricing relevant?

My water company bills me per cubic metre (there's a water meter on the inlet) - the cost is small enough to be negligible. I can buy water in bottles for a much higher cost per litre. The prices are not comparable because it's obvious that bottling and transporting that water costs money.

This is true for your example. It's fairly cheap and easy to have a few fat fibre connections to a location (a location that was probably chosen due to advantageous pricing on utilities including telecoms), than it is to run a nationwide cellular network - which is pretty expensive stuff.

The price gap between the MVNO's and the contracts is growing with all your overage fees.

Soon, what advantage is there going to be to sign your life away to these guys? Just to get gouged?

The market is a two-way street. Firms respond to consumers, but consumers also respond to firms.

It's a maturing industry. More people have your smartphones now than those who don't. That easy gravy train is closing up shop.

This is just hard to take serious. This is an industry that seems more hellbent to destroy themselves than the cable companies.

Something needs to be done. Obviously MVNOs need to go out of business, be acquired, or otherwise cease to exist. Or at least have to pay as much if not more then what it costs to have plans with the real network operators. It's just not fair to the network operators...they should have a right to make a as much profit as they can with minimal competition, let alone on the very same network.

You're right that it's unfair to the legacy network builders, but they also somewhere along the way agreed to allow these MVNO's use of those networks.

If that's the case, then that egg is on Verizon and Sprint's face. I'm assuming they're making plenty from those MVNO deals, otherwise they wouldn't be doing them. There's no incentive for them to burden their network with more subscribers at a lower cost if they weren't getting plenty for it.

Punitively going after the MVNO's isn't going to help the problem that this is an industry whose pricing far exceeds inflation, maybe even moreso than the ever-rising cable bill. They seem to think they can just get away with runaway growth forever, see how that worked for the cable companies.

Check the batteries in your sarcasm detector. I think they may be dead.

They won't get rid of the MVNOs because they provide the illusion of competition. It's better to let the MVNOs skim a bit off the top than face being classified as a monopoly and then be told how much profit you can make.

Now now, there's enough shills trolling around here that I thought it might have been possible.

We'd pay more for less service under this plan than we are getting now. And we have 2x smartphones and 1x dumbphone.

FAIL on Verizon's part.

Same here. We currently have 2 smartphones with unlimited data. Switching to the "new and improved Shared plan", and dropping to just 2Gb shared between us, our bill would go up $25 a month, before the extra taxes and fees.

I don't think this is designed to save anyone money.

Family's are going to be in for a wake up call when they get the bill for overages. Individuals are going to look elsewhere for service.

That's the point, Verizon Wireless doesn't think you or anyone else is paying them enough.

It saves me $30/mo with 4 smartphones. YMMV

their aint any, and at&t will follow suite... they want you to pay 500 a month for this crap, which no one in their right mind (unless they have a bunch of money) will pay for it, its way easyer to shut the cell phones off completely and go with home phone, the companys dont want that but they sure are pushing the middle and lower classes with these prices

This will ultimately backfire on the carriers in a big way, I predict.

In the current scheme of things, a minute is something a user can absolutely measure.. it's simple enough to look at their call indicator, their watch, the clock on the wall, etc. and realize how long they've been on the phone.

Now comes the scheme of billing by the byte. While it's great to place usage meters for the end user, the use of data doesn't get realized AS the data is being used, rather after.. we all know this. My point is that it can't be measured by the end user like a minute of time can be.

But where Verizon's huge fail is in all of this resides in the fact that people never asked for this pile of horse crap they're pushing on people, they just wanted to be able to use the data buckets they already paid for. The carriers created their own mess when they decided to start putting data into buckets... at that point the people decided that they wanted to consume their data as they pleased. We all know AT&T charged a fee JUST to access the data by a computer as a hotspot. That was a move that made no sense. Verizon's crap-pie is that they went overboard by forcing users into a completely new billing scheme that will actually raise more users' bills than anything - a massive rate hike and they know it.

$40 a month for unlimited talk and data when they admit that more people are moving away from that is stupid. Seems to me that this was the mistake... should be more like $9.99 a month and maybe 200 minutes.. make unlimited voice a $20 add on, it's all it's worth. Data should be by the byte in buckets but $50 for 1gb? that's robbery.. that just demonstrated an INCREDIBLE price hike per byte. $50 used to get unlimited, then 5GB, not it's only 1GB..

This isn't an honest shift.. they just majorly raised the price of data is all.

By the way, this blog fails to mention that those on current plans can only keep their plans at the next phone purchase if they pay full price for the phone.. and we all know most people won't pay $600 for an iPhone... besides, it's only a matter of time before these companies not only charge full price for the phone promising to be grandfathered, but will erode the unlimited "what ever" shortly after.. just think AT&T who promised a grandfathered unlimited data right before the new iphone came out only to sign up millions in a new 2 year contract and shortly after THROTTLE the unlimited to the (shocked look) SAME 2GB tiered plan that us people were trying to avoid.

ass-hats.. all of them

And the customer gets screwed there too. If you BYOD, cheaper plans should be available since they're not SUBSIDIZING your phone.

I fail to understand the value for customers on the data sharing. I can purchase a Smart Phone plan with the 2 GB data plan for $30.
So if I share the 2 GB with a second phone, it costs me $60 for the same 2GB data? If I purchase 2 data plans it costs the same as the shared plan but EACH phone gets 2 GB.

I guess if you have several data phones/devices, it may make sense as long as your use is not too high.

I don't need unlimited texting from Verizon, with all the Google Voice type apps available so the "unlimited" texting brings no value to me.

I will pass on this one.

Just easier to get and carry the tiny mifi router (like I have) in your pocket (which they made so easy to do) and share that data you already have.

For those who still have a Verizon unlimited data plan, here is how to hang on to it after June 28. At least for a while longer.

»news.cnet.com/8301-1035_ ··· 1_3-0-20

How's that private sector self-regulation working out for you... As it's not working out well at all for most other Americans.

We we ranked as having the most expensive cell services prior to these plans, where do you think we'll end up now.

And keeping unlimited data is a good idea if you are on an individual plan and don't want all these family plan features. Any phone changes or any new customers after June 28 will pay at least $20/mo more for verizon.

»news.cnet.com/8301-1035_ ··· aw-deal/Big families with some users being light users can pay less. But an individual with 2 devices(say a smartphone and a tablet) will get screwed over.

This is a "family share plan"... ya know.

I guess families are supposed to share the phone.

what about bigger buckets of data. for a bunch of devices 10GB may not be enough. how about 25GB or 50Gb buckets.

also i thought Verizon lte cards could be freely moved between devices, so why the distinction between phone, tablet, usb , mifi?

why not one price for a sim with voice/text and another for data only? the device it goes in is for the user to worry about not verizon.

So, an individual has a smartphone($40) and an iPad($10) and wants to share 10 GB($100) between them. That will run you $150/mo and that is before any FCC fees; USF fees; taxes; etc.

Even if you can live with 2GB shared between your iPhone & iPad, that will still run you $110/mo plus taxes & fees.

Please don't force me off my Unlimited Data Plan.

My plan is the 1,400 shared with two lines unlimited data on both lines I use 5-7gb a month in LTE places. While the other line uses less then 500mb a month.

Oh, you can keep that plan all you want.. just be prepared to pay full price at the next phone purchase you make to keep it.. that was already announced as well.

I have 4 smartphones on my plan right now. 1400 minutes, unlimited text, unlimited data. We use at most 200 minutes of voice a month. Wife, son, and I send maybe 100 texts each a month, daughter sends probably over 100 a day though. We use 15-20GB of combined data a month. Total cost right now is about $200 a month.

With this new plan I'd be paying a minimum $260 not counting the ridiculous overage charges I'd have to pay for using twice the allotment of data. It will be worth it to pay full price for devices and keep my old plan as long as I can. Once they force me onto a family data deal (even if I pay full retail for devices they'll likely force it at some point) I'll seriously consider switching services.

So say I just want a tablet $60 for 1 GB. Thoughtful. I'm assuming that they will still have tablet only, jetpack only because I only pay $36 for 5 GB on my Mifi now (with disc), and I hook my wifi tablet up to it when needed.

If they really wanted tablets on this, they would have made the pricing $0 or $5. People can't control themselves on tablets.

As one noted you can move SIM between devices, but I'm assuming that they will clamp down on that now and if the network sees a new device you will need to have it registered else people will just start sharing SIMs. You don't think big red hasn't thought of that

No word on tethering, but I assume they will still maintain some annoyance charge for the heck of it.

In any case, no matter how you slice this or dice this a family would be crazy to do this versus risk-limited prepaid. I can't imagine how many people are going to suffer under this plan.

I for one will keep my fam's $25 VM plan until ting gets some reasonable phones, and off to the races. Only $6 for a smartphone and data charges are less. Sprint is finally upgrading towers in my area and speeds are just as good as verizon now. We will never get wimax because out Canadian brothers to the north still have some analog stations, but some day LTE will be here.

I was not surprised that this new "plan" would be despicable, and Verizon has not let me down.

Holy price gouging, Batman!

This is a horrible deal, no matter how you look at it.

As much as I like Verizon's coverage, I very well might switch carriers if they try to force me onto this plan.

They're all going to go the same way. But remember, there is no collusion going on here either. And while I'm on that, they can't claim this is competition either.. and they can't say it's NOT collusion.. it's EASY for the cellular industry to make these drastic changes in an "open market" where the overwhelming majority of their customers are on contracts.. that buys them time to slow the churn in their own market/industry... moves like this in the retail sector such as wal-mart or target (in their own rights) would never survive because the customer can stop shopping one day and be done with one retailer and walk into another's door.

I"d normally call for regulation, but 1) I am not large on government involvement.. and 2) the government that controls this industry is already, well, the mouse is guarding the cheese already.

I think that a small amount of regulation could help the problem. It would go like this:

First, all carriers operating in the United States would have to use the same wireless technology. We're getting there with LTE, so we could standardize on that. Second, all phones sold must support all bands and be operable on all carriers. That way, you could take a phone from one carrier to another and use it on any of them. Third, any phone purchased must come unlocked and usable on any carrier, with all carrier-dependent software being capable of being uninstalled. This includes phones purchased on subsidy, since wireless contracts are tied to a person and not a phone. Yes, the customer gets a discounted phone, but they're still bound under that contract, regardless of which phone they use, and the ETF still applies, so there is no reason to lock a phone.

The carriers will hate this, but it would help customers tremendously.

Line 1: iPhone on 1400 plan with unlimited messaging at 99.99 plus $30 for unlimited data is $130.

Line 2: iPhone add-a-line $9.99 plus $30 for 2GB data is $40

Line 3: Mobile Hotspot $50 for 5GB data

Total: $220 before all of the taxes and crap...

New Plan:

$100 for 10GB data
$40 for iphone
$40 for iphone
$20 for hotspot

Total: $200

Am I missing something??? Seems like I will get more data than I cuttingly have and use, plus unlimited calling and the mobile hotspot feature for my other iPhones. Sounds like a good deal to me.

These new plans will cost more and provide less data than the current plans.

I'll stick with my 3 non-smart phones.

Simple as that. They know they are 200 pound gorilla with the biggest cell network in the country so if people want the best then they will pay. This may get some defectors spread out through the rest of the providers, but it comes down to the reliability of the network. And most large corporations use them, so even if they a mass of people run to other providers it wouldn't hurt there purse at all.

Yeah, Verizon doesn't owe anybody anything. It's clear from their halt to FIOS expansion and selling off to rural telcos. They will be a premium provider for people who can pay +$200/mo. Everybody else can use AOL and Cricket Wireless.

Ugh. I hope this doesn't change anything drastic for business plans...

We have ~100+ lines here.

Every time I hear people complain about AT&T and Verizon, I'm glad to be on "little ol' U.S. Cellular"...

I'd like to see about Business as well. I'm currently on an unlimited personal but work does off a Business unlimited plan as well.

currently 3 phones and mifi for 233.00 after taxes

new plan would be 120+20.00+x= (190.00 to 240.00)+ taxes and I lose unlimited on 2 phones.

Was waiting to see what they would offer and I like Verizon service but looks like I will be shopping and by shopping I mean heading to Sprint

Previously we were adding secondary lines for $10-ish, and adding $30-ish data plans to them.

Under this scheme/scam we're still adding them at $40, but need to add on data, and the data is extremely expensive.

I currently pay AT&T $110 for two unlimited iPhones, 200 texts each, and shared 550 minute plan. Under this plan, the minimum is $130 (40+40+50) and I only get 500mb per phone. I'd get unlimited minutes and unlimited text, but I don't use all those things anyway on my current plan.

It might be more palatable if they were including more GBs at each price point. $30 for 2GB would have been a more reasonable place to start (that is, after all, what they charge for my iPad), but even that's pushing it with those massive "base" charges.

Also, I'd like to get some justification on why a notebook/netbook is an additional $10 vs. a tablet.

Or if you're on Sprint (I'm on VZW), you're adding secondary lines for $20 that include the unlimited data.

And you think At@t is going to be any better?

very true, at&t will prob make it worse!!, ill stick with the old idea all together, the 2 major carriers know no one is using minutes like they use to...and so one of the major cash cows are gone, thus they force a unlimited voice on to people with family plan, on top of that they also know texting is slowly goin away... AT&T has said time and time again they want it all data, but I fear its not what people think these compnays want the bills to be above 100 or more every month, if even a fraction of that goes they revese course quick and find another option to recoup

and thats excatly what you see here, Verizon knows minutes are not being used so why not force unlimited (no one is gonna use it anyways lol)