Both Verizon and AT&T last year hinted more than a few times that they'd finally be joining the modern age by offering family data plans. Ideally the bucket-o-bytes approach would, like voice minutes, work across different family accounts and more importantly across devices, meaning no more annoying additional individual subscriptions for your tablet, handheld game console, or other device. While AT&T did recently announce a price hike, family plans were nowhere to be found during recent earnings announcements.

Verizon seems closer to a launch, telling attendees (transcript, pdf) at the Deutsche Bank Media and Telecommunications Conference that family plans will be dropping very soon. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo told investors that the company has been slow on the idea because it's a "a very complex equation," and Verizon has wanted to make sure such plans would be "good for Verizon and...good for our customer." Shammo gave mid year as a vague launch window, starting with LTE users:As it stands, Verizon makes plenty of money charging each individual member of a family an individual data plan for each device, with most of their allotments left unused. Verizon and AT&T pricing is very carefully crafted so that the least expensive option (usually around 200-300MB) is too little, but the next step up (usually 2-3 GB) is too much.

People clearly want pooled data if we're moving to per byte wireless. However, shifting away from the existing model, which is carefully designed to get everyone paying as much money as possible, has clearly confounded both companies. Both AT&T and Verizon will introduce new plans that try to give the impression of value, without eroding existing profits. In other words, expect oodles of caveats when these options finally arrive later this year.