said by Karl Bode:Yes, other than eliminating an entire price tier
- You mean the $19.99 for 75 megs ? They add and remove feature packs like this on almost a monthly basis. *yawn* How is that HUGE news?
said by Karl Bode:lowering the $9.99 cap from 50 to 20 cents per additional megabyte
- Ok, they LOWERED overage charges
- No (practically speaking) they actually haven't really reclassified anything. These classifications have always existed in verizon-world. Before you had smartphones and non-smartphones. Smartphones ALWAYS required the $29.99 data plan. Among the non-smartphones they would typically strongly
recommend you take a data plan for the multimedia-capable phones if you were going to make any use of the 3g-multimedia capabilities (otherwise you would get ass-reamed with $1.99/meg and undoubtedly bitch endlessly when the first bill came). This time last year, they would have tried to sell you on the vcast vpack for $15. Recently, they would try to get you onto the $9.99 or $19.99 plan. Now they REQUIRE the $9.99 plan for these NINE "multimedia" phones.
said by Karl Bode:reducing total number of phones offered
Phone selection varies on a weekly basis. Stocking additional phones does cost extra. Again, not really huge news here, as very few people care whether they sell 80 or 50 models of phones... Quick, off the top of your head, how many models of phones does AT&T sell? Right... nobody cares!
They dropped the price of unlimited by 30%. Everything else has stayed exactly the same. I guess that will be newsworthy, especially if other carriers respond.
said by Karl Bode:expanding which phones must have at least a $9.99 plan
AFAIK, nobody was FORCED onto the $9.99 plan before, but the majority of customers elected to purchase this feature pack anyway (since they bought a multimedia phone to use the MULTIMEDIA features). The remaining vocal minority complained bitterly about their $1.99/meg in overages (I'm not talking about the phantom charges, get-it-now or wap browser fiasco). Now there's NINE phones that will REQUIRE the $9.99 plan, but most of those customers already had at least the $9.99 data pack. This only affects those that wanted to buy a 3g-multimedia phone but not use any of the 3g-multimedia features!
said by Karl Bode: -- and essentially revamping their entire price structure so that most of their customers who use data pay more money
MOST OF THEIR CUSTOMERS!? NOT TRUE! - NOTHING changes for existing customers... you are grandfathered into your old plan for life (until you CHOOSE to change something)
(no change)- New smartphone users STILL pay $29.99. hell, they recently began to corp-discount the data packs as well. Smartphone data has actually become CHEAPER for me in the past few months.
(let's say no change)- New customers choosing to buy one of the NINE multimedia phones now HAVE to take the $9.99 data package as well (but most already chose to do this before anyway). The upside is that overage is now
much cheaper.
(so this might be more expensive --or-- cheaper depending on how much data you actually use per month)- New customers choosing any regular phone can continue to do what they have always done..
(no change)uhh... it isn't... I've seen this "story" 15 times already. it has been blown out of proportion by every single media outlet. The loss of vcast vpack, and MOU data was HUGE news IMHO (but never got really covered). As far as your wallet goes this is a little popcorn fart compared to that. The ONLY people affected are those that want to buy one of the nine "3g multimedia handsets" and pay $1.99/meg for data. Most customers with those phones typically already bought the $9.99 data plan anyway.
I'm not defending the US wireless industry here. Data is WAY WAY WAY overpriced (see some of my other posts comparing the cost of 3G services you can get in other countries). But verizon is actually comparable (in data pricing) with other US carriers, even after these new changes.
More importantly, the sky isn't falling at verizon wireless this January... This is a relatively minor adjustment considering some of the industry changes that have passed-by unnoticed these past three years!