Verizon Comes Up With Crafty New Way to Entice Folks Out of Unlimited Plans

[kodiak799]

Sorry to burst your bubble but haven't you read the reports of Verizon boasting that they're the carrier with more customers and more new activations? I don't think Verizon is going to get tired of losing customers to T-Mobile anytime soon.

Precisely. People have been saying for years "wait until VZW loses a ton of customeres to TMo/Sprint/etc"... Hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen. Most people with smartphones aren't sweating a $5/mo premium for the best service.

 

[squeak]

T-Mobile gains 1.1 million customers in Q2 2013, ups revenue 20 percent to $6.3 billion

I'm not saying that Verizon isn't continuing to grow, let's face it, most carriers will with the government providing low income individuals with phones and an ever increasing population it seems inevitable that the total number of Americans with cell phones will rise. However I think that quite a few of Tmo's new customers are former Verizon customers, and that can't go unnoticed by big red.

 

[squeak]

Precisely. People have been saying for years "wait until VZW loses a ton of customeres to TMo/Sprint/etc"... Hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen. Most people with smartphones aren't sweating a $5/mo premium for the best service.

It isn't likely to happen until their coverage gets better. In the early to mid 2000s Alltel was the only choice in my area, but over the course of 5 years Verizon developed equally good coverage in our area with better phones (bear in mind that we are in one of the areas that Verizon didn't get in their purchase of alltel, and alltel has blanket 3g coverage here). Verizon had taken most of Alltel's customers in our area long before the brought us 4g. I would save about $30/mo switching to Tmo, and have the option to get almost any phone I want, so if the coverage was there it would be a no brainer for me and many others.

 

[kodiak799]

However I think that quite a few of Tmo's new customers are former Verizon customers, and that can't go unnoticed by big red.

Doubtful....From VZW Q2 earnings call (and <1% turn is virtually unheard of in the industry):

"941,000 retail postpaid net additions, up 6 percent year over year; low retail postpaid churn of 0.93 percent; 100.1 million total retail connections, 94.3 million total retail postpaid connections."

I'm guessing VZW and TMo growth came at the expense of AT&T and/or Sprint. The problem with TMo and Sprint rivaling the other two for service/coverage is that takes money, and those two are struggling to turn a profit.

If you read more on TMo's Q2 report, you'd see while subscriber growth was 1.1M, profits swung from $207M in 2012 to a $16M loss in 2013 (on +$1.33B revenue growth). What this says is TMo is growing share at a loss. And that's not sustainable. When they inevitably have to raise prices, will their service still be as appealing?

 

[squeak]

Those are impressive numbers that I had not seen before. But if AT&T loses enough customers to offer plans similar to Tmo that's just as good for me, since they now have 4G here as well and their network is compatible with most of the phones that us Verizon customers long for. Hopefully Tmo's losses are due to expenditures in network expansions and upgrades. Let's say in a years time they increase revenue another 1.3 billion by adding more customers while keeping expenditures from rising too drastically, they will be back in the black and hopefully continuing to grow. It's my understanding that the European wireless companies structure their plans similar to Tmo's (I'm sure that's where magenta got the idea) and I'm hopeful that the US is headed in that direction.

 

[Preach2k]

I am not giving up my Verizon Unlimited Plan! I will be buying the Gnote 3 outright!!!

 

[liftedplane]

give me 20gb of data a month with tethering for $30 and maybe, JUST MAYBE!!!! I'll consider dropping my unlimited..

as it is you can keep trying VZW but it won't be happening.

 

[gveserat]

I am not giving up my Verizon Unlimited Plan! I will be buying the Gnote 3 outright!!!

AMEN! Go Note 3!

 

[cybertec69]

I will keep my unlimited as long as I can, just got a Slingbox 350 and streaming HD video to my phone is fantastic, and let me tell you, it burns data real fast. For people who do not know what a slingbox is, it connects to any of your home set top boxes, so you can stream you cable/Satellite home TV subscription to any device "laptop, tablet, Android phone or iPhone", wherever you are in the world, be it wifi or over 4G LTE, or computer connected via Ethernet cable.

 

[cybertec69]

I'm right there with you on that one. I pay $67 per month for unlimited data along with 450 min. and unlimited texts.

Same plan here, they will have to pry my unlimited from my cold dead hands:icon_ devil:

 

[mountainbikermark]

Please let this area of off topic discussion end. It never ends well to keep the debate going and I don't want to see anyone get in trouble when things turn fugly.
Thank you.

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[PereDroid]

Just read all 6 pages and not sure what Mark is talking about. Looks all On Topic to me. Unless he deleted some stuff.

I just don't understand Verizon. You want people off Unlimited? Then why is it MORE expensive to have a Limited plan. LOWER YOUR PRICES.
Example: Wife was up for an upgrade. Her bill at the time with her corporate discount was around $70 with unlimited data. To get a subsidized iPhone (blech, I know, right?) and get 2GB of data, the monthly cost shot up to just under $100. She was willing to gibe up her unlimited data. She has Slacker Premium and uses just under 2GB/month. But we had a hard time swallowing an extra $30/month! So we did the math.
Subsidized: $199 for the phone and an ADDITIONAL $30/mo for a 2 year contract to have limited data. $199 + $720 ($30/mo x 24 mo) = $920
Buy outright: $650 and not paying an extra $30/mo = a savings of nearly $300 over two years.
Now if VZW had a cheaper 2GB plan that would have kept our bill where it was, they would have successfully gotten us off of Unlimited Data.
It seems even this new plan won't keep us at that $70 price point.
I also am tired of hearing how great VZW's network is. It's crap in Cleveland, Ohio, Dead spots everywhere, one sliver og 4G at my house. And I live IN Cleveland proper. Not some smarmy little suburb. Cleveland. The 7th or 8th market that VZW rolled 4G into. And it's terrible. I puke in my mouth a little every time I hear them brag about them being the largest 4G network.

 

[mountainbikermark]

There was some cleanup done. It's all good now. No harms, no fouls

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[Rhino94]

give me 20gb of data a month with tethering for $30 and maybe, JUST MAYBE!!!! I'll consider dropping my unlimited..

as it is you can keep trying VZW but it won't be happening.

Verizon wants money and they are trying to limit the amount of usage on their towers by putting lower data caps. By doing so their towers will stay fast but with unlimited customers hogging up all the bandwidth its slow and it can't compete with at&t

 

[gadgetrants]

Verizon wants money and they are trying to limit the amount of usage on their towers by putting lower data caps. By doing so their towers will stay fast but with unlimited customers hogging up all the bandwidth its slow and it can't compete with at&t

I buy the argument, but not sure about the conclusion. I was under the impression (though we haven't heard anything in a LONG time) that Verizon was throttling heavy users:

Did you know Verizon also throttles unlimited data service? | Signal Strength - CNET News

If only we could see what throughput on an average tower looks like, and more importantly, how many of those users are the heavy, unlimited types. My gut feeling is that they/we are a very, very small percentage of total bandwidth these days.

-Matt