Verizon: Still No Cap Announcement 'Just As Yet'

I'll admit I'm not a happy camper. As much as I love my 35/35 Triple the price of it has me looking very seriously elsewhere. They popped my monthly bill from $141 to $180 in less than a year which is on the very high edge of what I can afford. Plus we subscribers get almost no pricing breaks - if I switch to a 2-year contract my price goes up 15/month. If I drop down a level I pay 15/month more. If I drop the phone the price doesn't change even though I'm paying $30/month for it.

Now let's add in a usage/overage cap. That means I'm gone no questions asked. It's this very idea of selling me a speed that I should be able to access night or day and then telling me I have to pay even more and more... this is the price I have to pay to use my fuc*ing service? Not happening. No way. At this point FiOS is overpriced and with a cap there would never be a reason to even consider them.

I am most likely going to cut the cord to the TV service. Since I am moving my bill went from $99 a month to $130.

Agreed, I stay with FiOS for uncapped data, add a cap and their's no point in paying the premium for FiOS.

FiOS's pricing is extremely convoluted, it practically forces you into the triple play. right now I have a free dvr, which technically you can't keep if you move, I'm moving in November and if they don't let me keep the free dvr, I'm sort of cutting the cord, dropping down to broadcast basic and 15/5.

I have to live with my 20gb cap and satellite tv.

This is just another step in that. Drive the price up, then claim no one was interested. It's wishful thinking on VZ's part to get out of a market they don't want to be in.

Meanwhile, have you heard about Verizon's 4G LTE network yet? You can package it with your Xfinity TV!

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Krishnaswamy bucks the TV industry executive trend of insisting that cord cutting isn't a real thing, acknowledging it's a "growing trend" that the company tries to adaptively combat.

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Yes, it grows every time the promotional prices end. People run right back to cable if they are offering a promotional price. Reverse every year or so and repeat.

I'd go back to cable and save my money (paying $95/month for 75/35 - Internet Only) if they impose a cap on the Internet. For almost $100/month and having to worry about caps, I might as well go back to cable, save my money and deal with the annoying, but cheap, internet they offer!

Yes "Cord Cutters" are real! My bill was just about to hit $205/month for TV & Internet Only (Extreme HD - not Ultimate HD) and 50/25 Internet - no home phone, 1 Home Media DVR & 2 HD Boxes, before I "cut the cord" - now I pay $8 bucks a month to watch tv!

I don't mind paying a premium price for the 75/35 - just don't bother me with caps and/or worries that I will hit a cap of some sort.

They've created an unsustainable model where new customers are never conditioned to pay their so-called market rates.

It's kind of like department stores, and nobody pays retail.

I'm not sure any business model has ever been successful in directly antagonizing their existing customers so much.

It really goes to the underwhelming competition we have, the competition Verizon could provide if it was slightly interested.

They're going to have change something and fast, or cord cutting is going to become the norm and not the exception.

Caps are like speed cameras. They take a measurement of how fast people move through a given area, then lower the speed limit to what 30% of people actually travel and set up a speed camera 50 yards from where the speed limit drops down to the new lower limit and Bingo, instant cash cow on 70% of commuters.

Same with Verizon; set people on blisteringly fast FIOS, once the market has been thoroughly saturated, set a cap to the lowest margin of what your subscribers typically use and then impose data caps and overages while encouraging everyone to switch to your 4G LTE plan so you can take "Broadband as fast as your home, everywhere you go" which also has data caps.

*Sent from my unlimited 3/1 DSL line for $40/mo, which sadly is slower than my StraightTalk phone *

Especially in your case where TWC is uncapped, and has expressed a more positive tone to keeping unlimited alive than VZ has.

What will be most entertaining is how VZ defends a cap on the basis of the network's capacity. If they somehow try it's to keep the network free of congestion, then they lose one of their key marketing provisions from cable.

If fiber can be congested too (It can't, but VZ would put this myth out there), why would people pay more for it when it's still capped?

It's almost like Comcast's marketing team would come up with this one.

I'm not sure cord cutting will become really popular for awhile.
As you said most people don't pay retail, I used to pay cable and directv off each other, then I switched to FiOS for a promotion and when that promotion is over I'll switch again or get FiOS to offer me a deal to stay (unlikely given their constant price hikes I know)

The thing about these promotional rates is as cord cutting becomes more and more of a threat you see two things, internet is the only thing that's price isn't slashed substantially and they'll give away TV and phone for $20 more, and they are introducing caps that make overages a real concern when cord cutting, both reduce the incentive to cut the cord.

What we really need is more broadband competition, and possibly full tv service options over the internet. Netflix works great, theirs no reason you couldn't have a guide and stream the show you want, or watch something that was on earlier in the day. The roadblock here is licenses, if apple is having a hard time doing it, everyone will.

I'm a heavy FIOS user(40-50TB/month) and if caps were introduced at some point in the future I would have to cut my usage heavily and consequently switch to a cheaper Time Warner plan. Paying a premium(especially after the recent set of rate hikes) is getting less and less justifiable. Based on the FIOS network design would caps ever be necessary? or has their market share become that great?

This is not entirely accurate.. Verizon is stuck with FTTP, what is not certain is what they will do with their remaining copper networks (and to a lesser extent, current build commitments). The BILLIONS of a warchest from the Bell Atlantic / GTE days are at least half spent (26 out of 50 billion dollars in cash). There's this segment of management that's had it bad for developing wireles and betting the farm on competing with AT&T in a duopoly-- and they've gotten their way.. for now. For a while I suspected that Verizon wanted to pay off Vodafone once and for all.. but now they've resigned to keep vodafone onboard probably indefinitely due to the fact that the FCC & DOJ is not going to just hand over all the goodies in terms of commoditization of wireline & wireless data... so that companies can feel free to gouge consumers. That means they'll need an investor to fall back upon if/when wireless cycles down in demand.

As ATT/Verizon jack up prices, this give smaller carriers every incentive to build their networks- largely because their business model still includes "unlimited style" plans & no overages. Nevertheless, the two big carriers are bulding in redundancy so even if they did have to compete at the unlimited model, they could do so easily.. and by the time they make all this money they currently are.. they'll have the deep pockets to win a pricing war too. Little do consumers seem to look at the big picture..

As for wireline? Raising prices will drive consumers away... but there is no profit in doing that... and I don't think it will give them a justification for usage based billing. Just about the only thing that would, is IF the evil empire Republicans take power..

If you thought corporate greed is obscene and out of control today....? Just give it 4 years of a republican administration & congress... The country will earn itself a new name.. and it's not a nice one..

Look, I hate caps as much as anyone, but what on earth could you be doing to use 40-50 TB's in a month?

Keep asking why FiOS doesn't have caps, and when will they start ... make it seem like it is inevitable, you might be able to convince FiOS of that. Why do you do that? Maybe FiOS can have a competitive advantage in that regard.

Sounds like FUD to me.

I agree 100%!

He's obviously torrenting Linux ISOs. HD 1080P "Linux ISOs".

Seriously though, how the fuck do you use 50TB of bandwidth on a FiOS line? I doubt he has a RAID array that large, and the upload speed is too low to be the cause.

Of course fiber can be congested. Just as cable has their transmission mechanisms, FiOS is using transmission technologies with specific limits (BPON and GPON).

»Verizon FiOS FAQ »What is BPON or GPON?

People on the older BPON system don't have FiOS' highest speed tiers available to them.

»forums.verizon.com/t5/Fi ··· p/402055

Fiber is more future proof, but in both cable and FiOS' case, these limits can be readily increased through the use of new technology that takes better advantage of the medium (FiOS: GPON, Cable: DOCSIS 3). DSL's twisted pair wires seem to be the only broadband tech that's really hitting a wall in terms of upgradeability.

You could have AT&T's FTTH and be limited to speeds slower than copper customers!

Cablevision will love my money...

Cable DOCSIS 3 shares 100-200 mbits between hundreds of customers. BPON shares 640 mbits between at most 32 customers. GPON ups that to 2.4 gbits between 32, and is now the standard. XGPON ups that to 10 gbits and will be the standard in a few years.

There's no comparison between cable and fiber, especially on the upload side.

Even with the price hikes it's doubtful that no one will be interested. Verizon may have installed some "greenfield" FiOS this summer where a few new houses are being built in Canonsburg but I still live about three miles away from where FiOS otherwise ends. I pay just as much for Comcast service that is quite possibly worse and arguably no better than FiOS. Sometimes I think Xfinity stands for infinitely expensive.

Seriously? Something like $17 billion invested in the last few years, fastest broadband network around, and they want to walk away from it?

Can't agree with you there.

smaller carriers were TOLD to build their OWN networks YEARS ago but refused. And we see what that got Earthlink, COVAD, Speakeasy and see how far its getting companies like Sonic.net (half ass copper network via AT&T and VZ/who ever) and a partly done FTTH that will never fully reach their footprint due to $$$ they don't want to spend without getting investors or more bank notes on the company. DSLX is the same along with every other reseller.

And these companies will NOT be able to get into the wireless market unless they all band together to out buy the specturm they need, or team up with the MSOs and put in wifi access points on the lines and do SIP/VoIP cellular.

they have in many areas. So why not the rest?

XGPON equipment (in the form of 10GPON1 that is practically 8 Gbps down, 2 Gbps up and compatible with existing GPON) may be commercially available as early as sometime next year. Don't know what Verizon's plans are but what is really cool is that 10GPON1 (uses it own two compatible wavelengths) and GPON will be able to be offered in the same neighborhood at the same time.

how are cord cutters lucky? most are moving to other providers, and if you totally do it- you move to OTA not to another provider.

can apply to be true- but unlike speed cameras- caps do NOT cause accidents like the cams.

Where have they abandoned FIOS?

Stopping the buildout, yes. Dropping the procuct, no.

They need ROI from it, and it gives them too many bragging rights.

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