[Rumor] Verizon May Share Plan Changes on June 26; Family Data Sharing Plans Possible

[czerdrill]

haha so true...finally a buffet analogy that makes sense!

 

[NeoandGeo]

I guarantee they are not losing money on me using between 5-10GB per line on my account due to using on average 50 minutes a month and paying nearly $100 a month just for minutes.

 

[StupidGenius]

I think most of you people that think this will somehow save you money, are absolutely deluding yourselves....

If 95% of the people using a data connection are only using a tiny amount of actual data (as in under 1 GB/Month), as all the studies claim, do you guys really think that VZW is going to move to a tiered pricing system that miraculously lets 95% of their customers decrease their bill?

They'll cap the top end, to stop tetherers/bittorent users, and maybe offer a higher tier to accommodate people who want to use/pay MORE, but you better believe that no big business is stupid enough to take all that revenue, throw it into a pile, and light a match just to make a bunch people who don't actually use the products they already are paying for can feel better about themselves. There is -zero- business incentive to give you guys a discount, because VZW already has you sheeple right where it wants you: Getting continually fleeced by making up the vast chunk of VZW's profit from data plans.

In my case, they will make more money. I'm not interested in having three $30 a month data plans. I will however pay one $50 a month shared plan. They made an extra $20 a month just from me, and I guarantee you that scenario is far from unique.

 

[kptphalkon]

you say that until you see exactly what 3 smartphones can chew through in a week....

Most people with a smartphone dont understand how much actually gets used when you run news, sports, twitter or facebook widgets that auto update. I imagine you have kids, hence the family plan? Tie in youtube or music streaming, sharing photos, and all the free apps that potentially interest you or your family. 3 phones, 5 GB, not enough room in my book

 

[kodiak799]

Widgets don't eat very much data, unless you have them set to update every 5 minutes. Pretty much the only way to rack up gigs and gigs of data, short of literally living your life on your phone, is video (or hours a day of pandora). Well, that and d/l torrents.

 

[kptphalkon]

we shall see as the ball starts rolling...

 

[kodiak799]

we shall see as the ball starts rolling...

There's nothing to see. I already know approximately what my widgets use being on 3G all day - it's a few megs. I have 4 full-screen RSS widgets that update @every 2 hours, Google news widget that updates every 3, a weather widget that updates every hour, and twitter every 6 hours. Plus I have gmail and exchange pushed.

I've do some light browsing, as well. Last week over 4 days (all on 3G) my usage was .

Granted, I sometimes stream Pandora and hi-def uses a whopping 60megs an hour. So an hour of Pandora every day (which, why, when I have thousands of MP3's) would still leave you short of 2gigs. But I can tell the browsing sessions and "other" data (like widgets and email)...Total for 4 days last week was 80megs, of that maybe 30megs was "other" data (only light browsing, no video or Pandora).

I stand by the only way to blow thru more than 2gigs of data is video and/or a ton of Pandora, and/or d/l torrents. D/l a rom and then updating/reloading apps through the market is probably among my biggest data usage, when I do it (but I usually d/l roms on my computer and transfer over)

It will be minimal pain for people to manage 2gigs (some can bleed if they allow little used apps to constantly update when refresh on open is sufficient). If you insist on watching a bunch of video or jamming Pandora all day, you're going to have to pay for it.

 

[spider210]

we shall see as the ball starts rolling...

There's nothing to see. I already know approximately what my widgets use being on 3G all day - it's a few megs. I have 4 full-screen RSS widgets that update @every 2 hours, Google news widget that updates every 3, a weather widget that updates every hour, and twitter every 6 hours. Plus I have gmail and exchange pushed.

I've do some light browsing, as well. Last week over 4 days (all on 3G) my usage was .

Granted, I sometimes stream Pandora and hi-def uses a whopping 60megs an hour. So an hour of Pandora every day (which, why, when I have thousands of MP3's) would still leave you short of 2gigs. But I can tell the browsing sessions and "other" data (like widgets and email)...Total for 4 days last week was 80megs, of that maybe 30megs was "other" data (only light browsing, no video or Pandora).

I stand by the only way to blow thru more than 2gigs of data is video and/or a ton of Pandora, and/or d/l torrents. D/l a rom and then updating/reloading apps through the market is probably among my biggest data usage, when I do it (but I usually d/l roms on my computer and transfer over)

It will be minimal pain for people to manage 2gigs (some can bleed if they allow little used apps to constantly update when refresh on open is sufficient). If you insist on watching a bunch of video or jamming Pandora all day, you're going to have to pay for it.

Do you realize what you said? ~ 60mb a day for 1 hour of pandora that leaves you 6mb a day for anything else (2048/31days = 66mb a day of usage) that is very easy to use. If you streamed 10 minutes of netflix on top of that, that is another 25mb. Say if you browsing facebook and looking at profile pictures just an album with 15 pictures is around 1mb full of just thumbnails.

Stop saying that 2gb is plenty. My parents who are in their 60's on average use 2.5gb a month and they don't even know how to begin using their phones like I would.

On another note I'm glad that everyone who HAS A SMARTPHONE with UNLIMITED DATA (not a feature phone or multimedia phone!!!!) will be able to keep their unlimited data

 

[Beka27]

In my case, they will make more money. I'm not interested in having three $30 a month data plans. I will however pay one $50 a month shared plan. They made an extra $20 a month just from me, and I guarantee you that scenario is far from unique.

I think a lot of people are thinking that way! Unfortunately, I'm not sure if that will work. I just posted this in the other thread before I saw your response, but it's probably more fitting over here:

My thoughts on the Family Share:
There will be a line charge for each phone sharing data, just like they have with minutes.
There may be a minimum plan to share data (for example: 2 phones can share the 2GB, 3+ phones must move up to the 5GB).
OR... the family data plan pricing may be different, so the extra line charges are already built into the cost.

Let's assume prices stay the same:
So the $50 plan for 5GB + $20 for two additional lines to share ($10 each line) = $70 for 3 phones to share data.

So you'll save some money, but Verizon is not going to make it SUPER COST-EFFECTIVE. They have no incentive to give away $60 worth of data.

Again, nothing official, just my thoughts and observations with the way VZW operates.


I'm very glad my husband and I (and most of the people on Droid Forums) have our unlimited plans in place. This is going to be messy... :icon_eek:

 

[StupidGenius]

In my case, they will make more money. I'm not interested in having three $30 a month data plans. I will however pay one $50 a month shared plan. They made an extra $20 a month just from me, and I guarantee you that scenario is far from unique.

I think a lot of people are thinking that way! Unfortunately, I'm not sure if that will work. I just posted this in the other thread before I saw your response, but it's probably more fitting over here:

My thoughts on the Family Share:
There will be a line charge for each phone sharing data, just like they have with minutes.
There may be a minimum plan to share data (for example: 2 phones can share the 2GB, 3+ phones must move up to the 5GB).
OR... the family data plan pricing may be different, so the extra line charges are already built into the cost.

Let's assume prices stay the same:
So the $50 plan for 5GB + $20 for two additional lines to share ($10 each line) = $70 for 3 phones to share data.

So you'll save some money, but Verizon is not going to make it SUPER COST-EFFECTIVE. They have no incentive to give away $60 worth of data.

Again, nothing official, just my thoughts and observations with the way VZW operates.


I'm very glad my husband and I (and most of the people on Droid Forums) have our unlimited plans in place. This is going to be messy... :icon_eek:

As you said, complete speculation on both our parts, we'll just have to wait and see.