  kdwycha
join:2003-01-30
Riverview, FL
 ·Bright House
 ·Verizon FiOS
| Well... That is certainly pointless when they just offer "Feature Phones".
How much data could you even use on one of those anyway with the crappy browser and text messaging :P
At least other carriers like Virgin Mobile offer decent smartphones like the LG Optimus V and such and "unlimited". | |
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 |  RobIn Deo speramus, God Bless the USAPremium
join:2001-08-25
Kendall, FL
kudos:2 | Re: Well... said by kdwycha:That is certainly pointless when they just offer "Feature Phones".
It's intentional. You can bet that in a few months time, Verizon will cancel the $50/mo. unlimited package, citing "Americans clearly are not interested in unlimited packages" and that "Americans understand the true value of the advantages of using a smart phone - and (I'm paraphrasing here) getting raped on data and text messaging charges is what Americans want, and we have listened."
Then AT&T-Mobile will fly in and say "Yes, we agree sister! We tried offering unlimited packages and our consumers rejected it. They want to be raped!"
And then some dorky politican in Washington D.C. will "praise" Verizon and AT&T-Mobile "listening" to the "American" people.
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CheckSite.us | YourIP.us | Reverseip.us | |
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| | Reviews:
·Insight Communic..
 ·Windstream
·Comcast
| Re: Well... Its kind of sad, but I think you're exactly right. This is just a series of motions Verizon has to go through to justify their increasing prices.
The 3 phones offered to this plan are pretty laughable. At least 2 of them have a physical keyboard designed for texting. As for web capability and ability to use apps, that's a different story.
-Oh, and lets not forget that their "best" phone offered isn't even 3g capable. So if you WERE to use the web it would be painfully slow. | |
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| |  thegeekPremium
join:2008-02-21
united state
kudos:1
·Suddenlink
·NPG Cable
| said by Rob:Verizon will cancel the $50/mo. unlimited package, citing "Americans clearly are not interested in unlimited packages"
It makes me shudder how well you are able to see into the future. | |
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| | |  NY TelPremium
join:2004-04-09
Smithtown, NY
kudos:3
 ·AT&T CallVantage
| Re: Well... said by thegeek:said by Rob:Verizon will cancel the $50/mo. unlimited package, citing "Americans clearly are not interested in unlimited packages"
It makes me shudder how well you are able to see into the future. No what will happen is after AT&T successfully buys T-Mobile (It will happen, I don't care what anyone says) they will eliminate unlimited calling and also will eliminate mobile-to-mobile calling. Then Verizon will follow. The end of competition as we know it. | |
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| | | | thegeekPremium
join:2008-02-21
united state
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Suddenlink
·NPG Cable
| Re: Well... they can iliminate unlimited mobile to mobile, i don't care. with 3 phones on my family plan we use about 200 minutes a month total. yet the smallest plan i can get is 1400 minutes. i'd rather pay per minute for phone service and have unlimited data and text. | |
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| | | | | NY TelPremium
join:2004-04-09
Smithtown, NY
kudos:3 | Re: Well... I'm not sure what I need at this point......lol | |
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| | | | | | | said by thegeek:they can iliminate unlimited mobile to mobile, i don't care. with 3 phones on my family plan we use about 200 minutes a month total. yet the smallest plan i can get is 1400 minutes. i'd rather pay per minute for phone service and have unlimited data and text.
per minute rate on ATT is $0.45 per minute, you would be paying $90 for that 200 minutes.
what i would like to see is a lower monthly bill for lower minutes, instead they keep the price the same, or raise it, and raise the amount of useless minutes. hell i have 99 HOURS of roll over on my family plan with 3 lines  | |
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| | | | | |  FBGuyyippee ki yayPremium
join:2005-03-19 | Re: Well... you could leave it on a call for 4 days straight. yikes | |
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| | | | TMO already offers this. So a moot point against TMO-USA. TMO offers this plan on ANY phone as well. Not just "feature" phones. | |
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| | | RobIn Deo speramus, God Bless the USAPremium
join:2001-08-25
Kendall, FL
kudos:2 | Re: Well... said by hottboiinnc:TMO already offers this. So a moot point against TMO-USA. TMO offers this plan on ANY phone as well. Not just "feature" phones.
TMO won't be around, it'll be AT&T-Mobile.
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CheckSite.us | YourIP.us | Reverseip.us | |
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| | | | | | Re: Well... and your proof of this? Plus if the customer is already on a contract T can NOT just take them off it. | |
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| | | | | RobIn Deo speramus, God Bless the USAPremium
join:2001-08-25
Kendall, FL
kudos:2 | Re: Well... said by hottboiinnc:and your proof of this? Plus if the customer is already on a contract T can NOT just take them off it.
History? LOL contract's are intended to make customers believe they are protected.
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CheckSite.us | YourIP.us | Reverseip.us | |
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| | | | I disagree and strongly. This is going to take customers away from Tracfone. Nobody likes dealing with Straight Talk and for customers that don't care about smartphones, Straight Talk will lose customers. | |
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| | | I will pay attention when they offer the same with a BYOD feature. | |
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| | | | Re: Well... Verizon offer BYOD.... HAHAHAHA!!! Even ATT does not want it, the only reason you can even get away with it on ATT is because there GSM and any unlocked quad band phone will work for talk and txt ( data usually 2G only). | |
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| | | | | Re: Well... you can BYOD but only if its a VZW phone. And you're still on a contract with it if you don't get prepaid. | |
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 TomekPremium
join:2002-01-30
Valley Stream, NY | Sounds good So lets do the the math. On a family plan I pay about 75/mo for shared 1500 minutes, 200 txt and still unlimited data. If I choose unlimited txt then it is like 85. All with taxes. Now I can have all of that without family plan for $50 plus taxes (I assume total $70). So $15 /month over 24 months is $360, enough to get my own device.
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Semper Fi | |
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 Romney2012Defeat Obama 2012-Chg we can believe inPremium
join:2002-03-03
USA
kudos:4 |  Without smartphones this plan is useless
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»www.rickperry.org/ | |
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| iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
| Re: Without smartphones this plan is useless I think that's Verizon's point; for everyone who doesn't need/want a smartphone (there are plenty of people out there...DSLR is an echo chamber of techies who must have a smartphone) these plans are actually a very good deal. You get Verizon's network (coverage everywhere) and never need to worry about what your bill will be.
Yes, you won't have a smartphone, but what's a smartphone worth to you? The cheapest unlimited voice + text postpaid plan on Verizon is $90. Data is another $20 for 300MB, roughly equivalent to the plan a low-end phone like the ones offered with Unleashed would use. So $110 per month vs. $50 per month for equivalent functionality, just without the ability to buy a smartphone.
Is a smartphone worth $60 per month to you? | |
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| | FBGuyyippee ki yayPremium
join:2005-03-19 Reviews:
·Comcast
 ·T-Mobile US
·AT&T U-Verse
| Re: Without smartphones this plan is useless said by iansltx:Is a smartphone worth $60 per month to you?
Nope. I have 2 smartphones for $70/month though. I'd be happy to drop it down to $60/month. | |
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| | BYOD needed prepaid is mostly attractive for people who already have a phone and just want to add service. this plan does not allow that | |
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| | tethering allowed? wonder if there is any specific ban on tethering with these plans/phones. if not may be interesting for phone as a modem. | |
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| | | Re: tethering allowed? they purposely supply you with phones that will not allow tethering,and you cant BYOD, so no you cant buy that used droid off ebay and activate it. Did you really think they would have let you get away with that..HAHAHA! | |
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Reviews:
·Optimum Online
·Verizon FiOS
| postpaid $600 phones vs cheaper & limited selection prepaid apparently the big carriers are using the latest smart phones as the devils contract to get you to sign up with post paid for 2 years. usually many of these phones artifically carry a $600+ msrp pricetag.
prepaid phones will generally max out at about $350. verizon already offers a MVNO unlimited solution (striaght talk for $45).. but alas, that is stealthily capped for 'over usage' and they can cancel your service without much recourse (maybe a class action law suit?)
Verizon is probably doing a 180 on offering unlimited again because the DOJ dropped the hammer on AT&T. The timing of a push for DUOPOLY marketshare and higher prices was not favorably looked upon by the feds. However, they're offering it as a back-end(prepaid).. time will tell if unlimited is truly unlimited, or still has caveats to ban tethering, streaming, and high bandwidth applications such as streaming and downloading/uploading VOICE/VIDEO. Recently, we've seen even Sprint sorta push to throttling, so networks have to be invested so that cell sites are more redundant in the last mile. As of yet, nobody's found a smoking gun that DATA is priorititzed for postpaid customers over prepaid ones, but feel free to prove me wrong.
Wired data still plays an important role in the telecom sector. Not even fully deployed 4g:LTE would provide enough bandwidth to replace it during comparably peak usage periods (wired vs wireless). | |
|
acrowl
join:2001-08-08
California, KY | This Product Already Is Nationwide Its called Straight Talk. Its sold at Walmart. They have three base (Feature) phones that they sell. It runs on the Verizon network.
If I were anyone considering this, go with Page Plus. Google them. They prvate lable Verizon's network. They allow any phone (except Blackberry) on the network. So go find an awesome phone on EBay and activate it.
The only limit is with what data you can consume each month. So no streaming for you. | |
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| iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 | Re: This Product Already Is Nationwide It runs on Verizon or AT&T, depending on the phone. Verizon's phone offerings will likely be a little cheaper/better, and they'll all run on VZW. | |
|
RDC17
join:2011-05-15
Baltimore, MD | Data on dumbphones? Why even bother? More and more websites are making their mobile sites touch-centric for iOS and Android. I remember the days of browsing the web from my RAZR, man there was nothing like the blazing fast speed of GPRS..... | |
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| iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 | Re: Data on dumbphones? 1xRTT is 2-4x faster than GPRS. Sure, you'll be limited to Facebook Mobile, GMail Mobile, CNN Mobile and other made-for-dumbphone sites, but such websites are still alive and well. | |
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| | FBGuyyippee ki yayPremium
join:2005-03-19 | Re: Data on dumbphones? said by iansltx:...but such websites are still alive and well.
not for long. | |
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 C0deZer0Oc'D To Rhythm And PolicePremium
join:2001-10-03
Davenport, FL |  Never had verizon wireless, never will with this
Naturally, the prospect came to going to Verizon. The way I figured it, the cheapest it would run me for a plan with them with me would be $180/month plus taxes, fees, etc. for the fewest minutes and the largest data plan. And that doesn't include the cost of the phone, or the activation, or the long-term contract requirement. I was looking at their Unleashed service, because that wouldn't have been much more to have the same level of coverage. Yet because of this bass ackwards requirement where you can only use three POS phones. I'm sorry, but I don't see a point in going to Verizon if I personally can't have a 4G phone. And $80 for the data plan is insane when I currently am getting full service (voice, data/etc.) for less than half what they're smoking charging.
Wouldn't touch AT&T with a 40-ft. pole, either. Dealing with them for anything (even just making payments) was an exercise in frustration.
Sprint still has unlimited; however, that's $130+tax instead.
At this rate, I think I might just go ahead with Boost...  I personally am sick and tired of these basic phones... I want a smartphone. But I am not paying $800 for one and be on a lock-in contract for two years, when it's just going to fail in one year like every phone I've ever had since I started using wireless phones. 
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Because, f*ck Sony | |
|
Reviews:
·Comcast
·T-Mobile US
| Did everyone forget this ? ATT Go phone unlimited drops to $50 a month....
»www.androidguys.com/2011/06/21/a···eb-plan/
and carries the same limitation (especially no smartphones use at all)
This is just Verizons way of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" of course Verizon and ATT will happily provide you unlimited data ( at 2G or slower only) but if you want 3G, 4G, LTE or anything faster than dial up "get the lube out and get ready" to sign our 2 year + contract if you want the good stuff. Its like selling crack give them a little free sample of the good stuff ( 2G), and when they come begging for more (3G/4G) rape them blind. | |
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| iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
| Re: Did everyone forget this ? AT&T's phones have 3G...at least some of them do. However you're right about the no smartphones stipulation. You're also correct that VZ phones offered with this plan are 1x-only.
It's their business though, and it's called market segmentation. If you must have a smartphone (remember that both GoPhones and Unleashed phones still can access the 'net) and if you must have it on a carrier other than Sprint, you have to put up with high prices on data...or get Simple Mobile non-contract ($60 per month unlimited 4G + voice + messaging) and buy your phone up front. If you want to use VZW or AT&T and want an unlimited plan for $50, no smartphone for you. | |
|
| | Well Obviously, Verizon would not Undercut Themselves They are not going to give you the best phones, unlimited everything, and the fastest speeds at $50. Otherwise, nobody would go postpaid which is where they make all their money.
Verizon is just trying to appeal those people who are basically just callers and unhappy on MetroPCS, Cricket, and other prepaids. Their appeal would naturally be better coverage than the other guys.
By the way, that article is already a week-old. You need to check the newswire a little more often.  | |
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| | They have already cornered the market This program is to attack the sprint MVNOs, period (and their own) Pageplus offers unlimited for $45 on VZW but w/ only 100 MB of data. Of course they only use feature phones. They need to shore up their margins on voice/txt and this is a profitable way to do it. They wont get into the weeds w/ smaller plans because there is not enough margin.
As the big guys know quite well, that 90% of the people could do with less than 200MB with light browsing and say droid services. Does anyone have a plan like that?
Yes the sprint MVNOs. My wife is that user. So I pay $25 for unlimited text/real data/droid, but only 300min (she doesnt use much voice anyways). She is not a heavy hitter (maybe 50Mb/month) and texts (free to carriers). So even w/ $25 and Sprints crappy EVDO they are making $$$ on her.
My plan on VZW is $120, and I only use 1GB/month (Wifi when I can), and maybe 1200 min/month (80% is VZW M2M), so I am like a cash cow. It's corporate paid. However if it were my own buck I'd be on prepaid.
So do they want 5% margin or 20% margin. They will obviously sucker as many people into the big plans with the shiny phones, and for the smart ones come up with some overpriced all you can eat buffet for 1/2 the price but with crippled features (the camry people). There are a lot of camry people out there.
If Sprint had a decent network I would be on boost, but alas it sucks in UNY. ATT sucks in general in NE, and VZW coverage is stellar. I had pageplus (VZW) but the wifey wanted a "smartphone" which she doesnt use, but VZW doesnt do smartphone unless you want to pay up and direct.
So what the average person wants is a nice smartphone with occasional fast data and not get jacked for SMS/MMS, and decent coverage. Apple has suckered the masses into overpaying, so now the phone guys are busy gobbling up everything in site now that the masses are hooked.
The closest to nirvana for the masses is VM or Boost. For family plans that still is the big guys because you can pool resources. They are slowly "de-featuring" them too, so families will be getting killed sooner or later on that.
They have 100's of actuaries who have already figured this all out. Sans competition, pay up. Plain and simple. I blame the govt w/ their spectrum auctions. Create artificial scarcity. | |
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| Sgreer
join:2011-09-10
Washington, DC | Re: They have already cornered the market This program is to attack the sprint MVNOs
The closest to nirvana for the masses is VM or Boost | |
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| Sgreer
join:2011-09-10
Washington, DC | I've been puzzling about why Sprint would host Tracfone's / Straight talk's new Galaxy android phone, accompanied with their own unlimited Everything plan, seeing that Straight talk possibly constitutes a bigger immediate threat to Boost, and VM. I think you've hit it on the nose though; Sprint consider Verizon's 'unleashed' plan, to be a bigger threat than the AMX subsidiary, and therefore the collaboration...Nirvana for the masses?! - sorry so many thoughts come to mind. | |
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| | Unleash the hounds! This sounds more like Verizon Bound to me. Throw some Meredith Baxter Birney in and spice it up a bit, please!
Seriously, a $4.99/month tethering plan that doubled whatever your current "phone-only" data plan provided would produce more revenue that this, and although many of us still consider it double-dipping by the carrier would probably go for it just to avoid the headache being forced to root or jailbreak our devices so that they function like they should out-of-the-box in the first place. | |
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| | New Rumor is that Unleashed will Start on the 15th Plus, you can use any current Verizon prepaid feature phone. No smartphones or touchscreen models even if they were sold as prepaid. No postpaid phones.
Verizon is looking to create new revenue streams, not cannibalize their old ones. | |
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 acid343211Hallo lisa Aus AmerikaPremium
join:2001-08-31
Byron, GA | Dont need it... Don't have to worry about my usage am Grandfathered In.Unlimited text data voice,So far used 5.5GB on my iphone4. 
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Support
»www.minutemanproject.com/ | |
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 HarddriveProud American and Infidel since 1968.Premium
join:2000-09-20
Phone Room
kudos:2 | Sum of all things. Great packaged service + shitty phones = shitty service. | |
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