Verizon Preps for Tiered Data Plans and New Family Plans (Maybe This Summer)

[sober]

Ok......4g is billed as being awesome in part because of its media streaming abilities. IF the tiered pricing is set up similar to at&t then those caps could be blown out of the water with this new service. Personally, I like unlimited plans because I KNOW what ill be paying every month....I would rather go to a dumbphone than worry about data charges, its just not worth the hassle, I got too much other crap to think about .

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[brockeverly]

If we tier data on 4G it is going to be difficult for a lot of customers. Just as an example, when I bought my Charge it came with $25 in free downloads from Verizon/Samsung via Samsung Media Hub. This service is (supposed) to only run via 4G, so my three downloaded videos is over 3gb in one shot.

 

[kodiak799]

Ok......4g is billed as being awesome in part because of its media streaming abilities.

Really? I've never gotten a sense for LTE being billed as anything more than super fast. It's not a ISP replacement and it's not a netflix hub. I've never had such an impression from commercials I've watched.

And streaming is different than tethering or mirroring. Netflix to your Droid is only like 150megs per movie. To a PC is like 2gigs. To a plasma becomes like 8-9gigs in hi-def.

 

[bernardino5]

Man all this tiered plans or them putting limitations on us suck just like ATT was so happy being with Verizon even though it's pricy but unlimited and good service I've had no complaints now I'm having second thoughts if they choose that route.

"ThuNd3rB0lT"

 

[gthotie5]

Yeah the shared data could be good because of the upgrading deal.
You can find wifi pretty much everywhere these days anyway so..

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[silverfang77]

What I don't understand is, VZW must have known this move on ATT's part would anger a lot of customers. So why didn't they instead offer unlimited to entice ATT customers over to them? Why are they instead following in ATT's path?

 

[TXPearl]

What I don't understand is, VZW must have known this move on ATT's part would anger a lot of customers. So why didn't they instead offer unlimited to entice ATT customers over to them? Why are they instead following in ATT's path?

Verizon has kept unlimited data options vs. AT&T's tiered plans for a while now. It must not be creating any material movement of customers to VZW. I see two reasons: most are still grandfathered into an unlimited plan, and/or the 2GB for $25/mo. is plenty of data and actually saves them a little money.

I view Verizon's upcoming tiered plans as a potential positive, especially if they offer a family share data plan. The huge data hogs should pay more - why this entitlement to unlimited data? Do they eat pizza only at CiCi's?

 

[sb1831]

I view Verizon's upcoming tiered plans as a potential positive, especially if they offer a family share data plan. The huge data hogs should pay more - why this entitlement to unlimited data? Do they eat pizza only at CiCi's?

This. If a person is on a family plan this has potential to save money and thats the way I took the article. I don't get why people are complaining about new technology costing more. Does wideband cable access not cost more than regular cable, which is more than DSL, and dial up? The Motorola StarTac cost me over 900$ when i bought it back in the 90s. Prices went up from analog to digital... It happens.

 

[alant40]

I guess I must have been the only one that got the good side of this. If you're a user that doesn't use much data and have multiple lines, it may actually be CHEAPER in the long run for you with a "family data" package. 30$ a line when everyone in your family has a smartphone, vs say $80 for 10Gb.(hypothetical). Not to mention you can always add another line if you're a person that likes to upgrade frequently and pay the extra line fee and always have an upgrade available.

Damn good point! I have three lines with data that I pay 29.99 each for. But I'm the only one that uses the data up. But your required to have a data plan with these smartphones. So in the long run it may be cheaper, at least in my case, with the family tiered data plans...

 

[firefighterwise]

The tiered data plans could save some people alot of money but to users like me it would have a negative affect. I used a little over 20 gigs this month and my wife 2.5. Ill have to cut out alot of what I do and trying to micro-manage everyone (3) on my line wont be easy because they wont even know how to keep up with data they just know how to use it. I don't mind paying more for unlimited but if they get rid of it all together I could be facing even higher phone bills.

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[big al]

I have been with VZW for 10 years.
I have had contracts the entire time and had new devices often as I could.

When I "renewed" for device pricing, it never changed my plan. It simply locks me into it for a new time period.
I was never forced into any kind of change. Even when my plan was old and no longer offered. I just switched to the family promo that was discussed here. Before that I had a plan that was offered to me like 6 years ago and was discontinued shortly after I got it .
They just renewed the existing contract. They never once forced my plan to change.

 

[firefighterwise]

As long as my Verizon plan stays like yours has I'm fine. I wont worry about getting 4g because its not even expected in my area for a while.

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[sober]

Ok......4g is billed as being awesome in part because of its media streaming abilities.

Really? I've never gotten a sense for LTE being billed as anything more than super fast. It's not a ISP replacement and it's not a netflix hub. I've never had such an impression from commercials I've watched.

And streaming is different than tethering or mirroring. Netflix to your Droid is only like 150megs per movie. To a PC is like 2gigs. To a plasma becomes like 8-9gigs in hi-def.

Just saw the droid charge commercial and they showed a fast and furious movie being played on the phone. Even if streaming doesn't use as much data as I thought these speeds will only lead to increased data usage. Anyone who thinks different is mistaken.

I guess my point is that I just don't need another bill to worry about. If its not unlimited I would just assume not have it. No big loss for me really.

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[kodiak799]

Just saw the droid charge commercial and they showed a fast and furious movie being played on the phone. Even if streaming doesn't use as much data as I thought these speeds will only lead to increased data usage. Anyone who thinks different is mistaken.

I guess my point is that I just don't need another bill to worry about. If its not unlimited I would just assume not have it. No big loss for me really.

Yeah, fair enough. Though I'm not sure how big an issue it really is, I mean I watch my cell minutes and it's generally not tough. You can get apps that tell you your monthly data usage so tracking is really not that big a deal.

I agree data usage will go up, but we still have no idea what the caps will be. 5gigs is really a massive amount of data for a smartphone - netflix movies are about 150megs and Pandora hi-def streams about 60megs an hour. And if Pandora is using all your data, I don't see the point listening all that much since your phone can store plenty of mp3s.

It's really, really hard to go over 2gigs without literally living on your phone, unless you are using it to replace home ISP. That's like 70 minutes of Pandora hi-def or an hour of tv programming A DAY. If someone does more than that, that's pretty impressive (or pathetic, depending on your perspective).

 

[MoeDaddy]

Sorry but it is not hard at all to go over 2gigs on your phone I avg about 3 per month. I'm away from home more than I am there (minus sleeping hours) so I do almost everything on my phone. I don't download movies or do torrents, I do occasionally download a new rom version but CM isn't that big only like 80-90megs and we have a release every few weeks. I do alot of browsing and reading news on the web and reading the forums in the browser (don't like tapatalk) so I'm not doing anything excessive but I am not the norm...

However, my girlfriend has the Droid Incredible and she is an avg user most of her data was from browsing and skype she used to avg about .5-1.2gigs per month. Now that she has netflix on her phone she has already gone thru 2.2gigs 15 days into the 31. Whenever she is away from home and doing nothing or waiting for someone or on break she watches a show on netflix. Maybe when the novelty wears off her usage will go down but who knows... Netflix is on the market for her phone and will be for more soon... Just like netflix taking 30%+ of net traffic when it is on all phones and tablets look for cell numbers to be similar.

Anyway, VZW isn't stupid they are doing this now before everyone gets access to all the streaming and cloud services and usage spikes, before people realize how much data they will actually use... So nobody will even balk at tiered data now but a few years from now VZW will make a nice sum on data overages...