I average 15gb a month NO TETHERING, this is from playing games, listening to music and watching youtube. If sprint and T-Mobile can offer unlimited data so can VZW, period, Big red just wants to profit, plain an simple... as others have stated 4G is far more efficient than 3G and to think their network can't handle the "strain" is absolute garbage.
so no, the only reason is NOT to simply tether, not everyone uses their phone in the same way. maybe if verizon offered the free music streaming option that T-Mobile offers or did something where only half the data of video streaming affected you then more people would upgrade.
honestly they shove all these music streaming video watching data hogging apps down our throats then ask us to pay an arm an a leg in data to use them and slap the hell out of us if we go over our "alloted" data. Sounds like a racket to me.
So don't offer unlimited for 30 offer it for 90 or 100 for unlimited data on a family plan.... this would not hurt them at all, in fact it might cause people {me) to upgrade.... as it is if they pull my UD from me I'm jumping ship, and I've been with verizon myself since 05 my mother had been with them since they were airtouch back in the 1990's.
I rarely tether, I also rarely have wifi near me... no need to tether, my phone is my computer I can quite literally do everything but my label design on my phone.... no reason to tether unless my wifi goes out. I pay 34.99 a month for comcast, and when the plan price increases I call comcast, ask for a discount and get one.... same with dish network.
As others have stated it's all about the almighty dollar and how much they can pull (read gouge) their customers an still retain a profitable business model. clearly their doing something right, or perhaps it's the fact that plain Joe Nobody is a sheep and the general population doesn't understand what's truly going on an just takes what these companies do at face value because that's the way we've been trained for the past 50 years. or perhaps I'm just jaded and completely off topic.
Some of the smaller carriers still offer Unlimited data, because they have to. They don't have the network coverage or quality that VZW does, so in order to give themselves some sort of competititve advantage, they offer the one thing that VZW and ATT don't, Unlimited data... If they didn't have to do that to entice people over to their lesser quality networks, they wouldn't. believe me.
With VZW LTE, it rivals what many people in the country can get on their home ISP. I live up near the lake, and the only option here is U-Verse, which I pay good money for their top data plan which is 45mbit, which it almost never sees because the TV is running over that, so if I am recording 3 or 4 HD shows or movies, my internet sucks. But I get full LTE signal here, so it would be awesome to just run my stuff off that and not have an $80 internet bill.
And a lot of people with UDP plans are doing just that, and soaking up stupid amounts of data...
I don't stream all day... I load stuff onto the phone, hundreds of hours of music, etc... There is wifi almost everywhere you go these days... I understand that some people do stream all day... But how many do it, BECAUSE they are on UDP? I mean, you drive a certain amount each year because you have to get places... but if you got unlimited gas for free, I am betting that the average person would drive a lot more, "just because its there"... And after a few years, that "I deserve that because I have had it" mindset kicks in, where they think that they actually need that much gas now, which in most cases is not accurate...
It's like the SD slot "issue"... How many people really need 175 apps and 11 weeks worth of music and the entire series of LOST in HD on their phone? But to hear people whining about new phones not coming with sd slots, you would think that the world was ending... When in reality, most of the crap on their phone is there because "they had the space", not because there was any real need. If phones had never come with SD slots, they wouldn't even think twice about it.
People hate feeling like something is being taken away from them, even if they don't really have a need for it anyway...
back to the original question. Has anyone, any member of this forum, bought a new phone from Verizon and paid full price, or bought a phone somewhere on-line and activated it on your existing number? If so, did that purchase / activation change your existing plan in any way?
