[Updated] Verizon To Officially Reveal Tiered Data Plans July 7th; Plans Leaked Below

[czerdrill]

Again I think you're putting way too much weight on what ppl on a forum say. Believe me verizon is in no danger of losing droves of customers....they're not te first company to do tiers and won't be the last. No way that millions of ppl are going to leave. That's a silly suggestion.

It might be bs (doesn't affect me either way so I don't care), but sorry this won't be the mistake that vzw wishes they never made nor are they going to backtrack after trying this for a couple months and go back to unlimited. Ppl get way too dramatic haha.

That being said, you might be able to keep your unlimited anyway. I think ppl should relax a little till vzw confirms this

I know that I can keep mine, for now, but as far as new contracts go, what do you think will happen when one company offers unlimited data for $30, and the other charges $80 for 10GB?

You don't see a potential for large losses, or at least a decline in new contracts if you are the company charging so much more than anyone else?

More and more people are using phones for more than just phones. With Netflix coming to Android, data usage is going to jump and VZW is simply trying to capitalize on that. It will either cripple Netflix on this platform as people won't want to spend an extra $40 a month to use a $10 Netflix service, or, people will go to carriers with better priced data plans.

I don't see where this is good for the consumer, in any case.

i agree that an unlimited plan is more appealing then $80 for 10GB, but that's not how all of VZWs customers think. If that was the case then all, not some of their customers would leave. the truth is, people don't care about these things. just like people don't care about dual core vs single core and hacking and custom ROMs. how do i know this? because data usage is not rampant, at least not yet. 99% of smartphone users in the US (all carriers) use less then 5GB. The ones who use near 5GB are 1%. 95% use around 500MB. Smartphone users are not power user business executives who need 90GB worth of data every month. And like I said yesterday why wouldn't VZW try to make money off those that do use that much data?

That's how VZW is going to sell their plans. They're not going to say "you gotta pay more to stay with us", most people wont notice any difference whatsoever if they are tiered. and the new customers will be sold by being told "if you want to play it safe get this plan..."...and they'll do it. people are not going to go online, check out data usage estimators and realize they're getting screwed or not. i know ppl hate hearing this stuff, but android users are not super genius educated consumers who sit around hacking and taking full advantage of their phone's capabilities and researching brand new ways to utilize their smartphone's potential.

they're normal, average unremarkable users who check a couple of emails and update their status. they wouldn't know the difference between 2GB and 2MB. They're not mensa members who will realize the injustice of these tiered plans and stand firm against the evil corporation...i understand when you're on a forum you think everyone thinks like you because many here do think like you, but let's be realistic here.

And as for Netflix, again, people are not suddenly going to be sitting around watching movies on their phones for days straight. It's just a gimmick, and not one that has any sustainable value. Again, you and I might watch Netflix (I most probably wont, the novelty wore off after about 2 minutes for me), but the average user is not going to suddenly be watching TV shows and movies all day and using 20GB of data every month just because they have Netflix on their phone now.

 

[bplewis24]

OK. I may get flamed for this but i don't really care. This is what i was told yesterday at the Verizon store in Salisbury, MD.

"Sir, that only affects NEW customers. Current customers with unlimited data will be able to continue with that until they change THE DATA portion of their plan. Upgrades of devices after the tiered plans go into effect will not effect you at all. You will continue with your current unlimited data plan"

I then asked......"why would anyone change the data package?" "it's $30 for 2 GB or currently you have $30 for unlimited? That doesn't make sense?" I was then told that there would be lesser data packages to choose from. Though, he could not go into any more detail due to his superior approaching.

SO. How trustworthy is this VZW employee? We will have to see

Let us hope he is the most trustworthy VZW employee in the history of the company, hold hands and bow our heads in prayer until each of us have gone through our upgrade process!

 

[SquireSCA]

I know that I can keep mine, for now, but as far as new contracts go, what do you think will happen when one company offers unlimited data for $30, and the other charges $80 for 10GB?

You don't see a potential for large losses, or at least a decline in new contracts if you are the company charging so much more than anyone else?

More and more people are using phones for more than just phones. With Netflix coming to Android, data usage is going to jump and VZW is simply trying to capitalize on that. It will either cripple Netflix on this platform as people won't want to spend an extra $40 a month to use a $10 Netflix service, or, people will go to carriers with better priced data plans.

I don't see where this is good for the consumer, in any case.

i agree that an unlimited plan is more appealing then $80 for 10GB, but that's not how all of VZWs customers think. If that was the case then all, not some of their customers would leave. the truth is, people don't care about these things. just like people don't care about dual core vs single core and hacking and custom ROMs. how do i know this? because data usage is not rampant, at least not yet. 99% of smartphone users in the US (all carriers) use less then 5GB. The ones who use near 5GB are 1%. 95% use around 500MB. Smartphone users are not power user business executives who need 90GB worth of data every month. And like I said yesterday why wouldn't VZW try to make money off those that do use that much data?

That's how VZW is going to sell their plans. They're not going to say "you gotta pay more to stay with us", most people wont notice any difference whatsoever if they are tiered. and the new customers will be sold by being told "if you want to play it safe get this plan..."...and they'll do it. people are not going to go online, check out data usage estimators and realize they're getting screwed or not. i know ppl hate hearing this stuff, but android users are not super genius educated consumers who sit around hacking and taking full advantage of their phone's capabilities and researching brand new ways to utilize their smartphone's potential.

they're normal, average unremarkable users who check a couple of emails and update their status. they wouldn't know the difference between 2GB and 2MB. They're not mensa members who will realize the injustice of these tiered plans and stand firm against the evil corporation...i understand when you're on a forum you think everyone thinks like you because many here do think like you, but let's be realistic here.

And as for Netflix, again, people are not suddenly going to be sitting around watching movies on their phones for days straight. It's just a gimmick, and not one that has any sustainable value. Again, you and I might watch Netflix (I most probably wont, the novelty wore off after about 2 minutes for me), but the average user is not going to suddenly be watching TV shows and movies all day and using 20GB of data every month just because they have Netflix on their phone now.

You don't have to watch Netflix very much. I already told you that my data usage jumped more than 1GB just watching Heroes on Netflix for at most, 30 minutes, 3 times a week.

And while people may not be power users, they do understand one thing, the cost of their bill. When these prices go into effect, expect the other carriers to run tons of ads about how "the other guy charges you $80 for X amount of data, when you can get more data for 1/3 the price that they charge"...

All of the carriers have comparable phones now. There really isn't much hardware advantage from one carrier to another. But, if a carrier like Sprint can offer 4G and an "Everything Data Plan" for $109 a month, while VZW will charge you almost $200 for a 10GB plan, plus unlimited voice and texts, I think that a lot of people, as time goes on, will migrate to other carriers.

Jacking up prices may make them money in the short term, but another carrier will then step in and capitalize on that demand in the market for a better alternative.

 

[czerdrill]

i agree that an unlimited plan is more appealing then $80 for 10GB, but that's not how all of VZWs customers think. If that was the case then all, not some of their customers would leave. the truth is, people don't care about these things. just like people don't care about dual core vs single core and hacking and custom ROMs. how do i know this? because data usage is not rampant, at least not yet. 99% of smartphone users in the US (all carriers) use less then 5GB. The ones who use near 5GB are 1%. 95% use around 500MB. Smartphone users are not power user business executives who need 90GB worth of data every month. And like I said yesterday why wouldn't VZW try to make money off those that do use that much data?

That's how VZW is going to sell their plans. They're not going to say "you gotta pay more to stay with us", most people wont notice any difference whatsoever if they are tiered. and the new customers will be sold by being told "if you want to play it safe get this plan..."...and they'll do it. people are not going to go online, check out data usage estimators and realize they're getting screwed or not. i know ppl hate hearing this stuff, but android users are not super genius educated consumers who sit around hacking and taking full advantage of their phone's capabilities and researching brand new ways to utilize their smartphone's potential.

they're normal, average unremarkable users who check a couple of emails and update their status. they wouldn't know the difference between 2GB and 2MB. They're not mensa members who will realize the injustice of these tiered plans and stand firm against the evil corporation...i understand when you're on a forum you think everyone thinks like you because many here do think like you, but let's be realistic here.

And as for Netflix, again, people are not suddenly going to be sitting around watching movies on their phones for days straight. It's just a gimmick, and not one that has any sustainable value. Again, you and I might watch Netflix (I most probably wont, the novelty wore off after about 2 minutes for me), but the average user is not going to suddenly be watching TV shows and movies all day and using 20GB of data every month just because they have Netflix on their phone now.

You don't have to watch Netflix very much. I already told you that my data usage jumped more than 1GB just watching Heroes on Netflix for at most, 30 minutes, 3 times a week.

And while people may not be power users, they do understand one thing, the cost of their bill. When these prices go into effect, expect the other carriers to run tons of ads about how "the other guy charges you $80 for X amount of data, when you can get more data for 1/3 the price that they charge"...

All of the carriers have comparable phones now. There really isn't much hardware advantage from one carrier to another. But, if a carrier like Sprint can offer 4G and an "Everything Data Plan" for $109 a month, while VZW will charge you almost $200 for a 10GB plan, plus unlimited voice and texts, I think that a lot of people, as time goes on, will migrate to other carriers.

Jacking up prices may make them money in the short term, but another carrier will then step in and capitalize on that demand in the market for a better alternative.

Sprint will eventually go tiered. There is no logical way that they can offer unlimited forever and maintain a healthy network as more and more people get smartphones. Contrary to what people think, greed is not the only factor in offering tiered plans...smartphone customers are growing exponentially pretty much. Sprint is the only major carrier left that still has unlimited, and they'll eventually go tiered. What reason would they have not to? Is Sprint the "nice company" that truly cares about its customers even if it means losing money? Doubtful.

 

[SquireSCA]

Sprint will eventually go tiered. There is no logical way that they can offer unlimited forever and maintain a healthy network as more and more people get smartphones. Contrary to what people think, greed is not the only factor in offering tiered plans...smartphone customers are growing exponentially pretty much. Sprint is the only major carrier left that still has unlimited, and they'll eventually go tiered. What reason would they have not to? Is Sprint the "nice company" that truly cares about its customers even if it means losing money? Doubtful.

One reason would be that it gives them a competitive advantage of being the only carrier to have that plan. What you lose on each plan you make up for in quantity... economies of scale.

 

[czerdrill]

Sprint will eventually go tiered. There is no logical way that they can offer unlimited forever and maintain a healthy network as more and more people get smartphones. Contrary to what people think, greed is not the only factor in offering tiered plans...smartphone customers are growing exponentially pretty much. Sprint is the only major carrier left that still has unlimited, and they'll eventually go tiered. What reason would they have not to? Is Sprint the "nice company" that truly cares about its customers even if it means losing money? Doubtful.

One reason would be that it gives them a competitive advantage of being the only carrier to have that plan. What you lose on each plan you make up for in quantity... economies of scale.

Well yes, but it's an infrastructure thing too. As more customers sign up, their costs are going to go up too, and they'll have to recoup that somehow. So with increased losses and increased costs, they're going to have to move from unlimited to something where they can get more revenue. Right now they have that competitive advantage sure, but I dunno, I doubt they'll have unlimited for long, especially since Hesse already commented that they haven't ruled it out (sounds just like what Verizon said a year ago, and look where we're at now...)

 

[jroc]

I personally don't think Netflix will really take off on smartphones. Tablets, yes, and pc's they already have. But I think once the novelty wears off of "gee, cool I have netflix on my phone" most people aren't going to watch many movies worth seeing on a tiny screen.

There's a lot of stuff like that. While Pandora and other streaming music services are great, I still prefer my mp3's (and that is/was a large driver behind smartphones). And syncing dropbox, what's the point? Maybe once in a while as a back-up. Same with cloud services. The whole point, IMO, if storage on a phone is to be able to listen to music, browse photos, even watch a movie off-line. Maybe it is the future (distant future) when speeds are fast enough to have 0 lag to store everything in the cloud, but the problem remains places without a signal (like airplanes).

I thought this same thing....until I tried Netflix yesterday on my Droid X. I was waiting in the car while some one went into CVS to get some medicine and other things.

About 1/2 an hour to an hour later...I was extremely happy Netflix was working and working well over 3G. I tried it just to see what would happen and I was surprised it worked so well.

I think as more ppl get the bigger phones, Netflix will probably be used more than we think on phones. There was an article about top 5 phones sold either last year or from January of this year. The Droid X and EVO was in that top 5.

 

[jayman350]

Sprint will eventually go tiered. There is no logical way that they can offer unlimited forever and maintain a healthy network as more and more people get smartphones. Contrary to what people think, greed is not the only factor in offering tiered plans...smartphone customers are growing exponentially pretty much. Sprint is the only major carrier left that still has unlimited, and they'll eventually go tiered. What reason would they have not to? Is Sprint the "nice company" that truly cares about its customers even if it means losing money? Doubtful.

As of right now, Sprint only has about 10% of the market. They are going to be the odd man out once the ATT/TMO merger goes through. So why wouldn't they try to stay as the only carrier to offer "unlimited everything"? Its probably not going to last forever, but that may be their best bet to try and lure people away from VZW and ATT.

 

[czerdrill]

Sprint will eventually go tiered. There is no logical way that they can offer unlimited forever and maintain a healthy network as more and more people get smartphones. Contrary to what people think, greed is not the only factor in offering tiered plans...smartphone customers are growing exponentially pretty much. Sprint is the only major carrier left that still has unlimited, and they'll eventually go tiered. What reason would they have not to? Is Sprint the "nice company" that truly cares about its customers even if it means losing money? Doubtful.

As of right now, Sprint only has about 10% of the market. They are going to be the odd man out once the ATT/TMO merger goes through. So why wouldn't they try to stay as the only carrier to offer "unlimited everything"? Its probably not going to last forever, but that may be their best bet to try and lure people away from VZW and ATT.

As I said, they have the competitive advantage now, but they will eventually move to tiered. There's zero reason for them not to, and the CEO has already said they're considering it (even after his "unlimited is unlimited" commercials). It's how the business works. Dan Hesse can go on TV and say "we love our customers and we believe unlimited is unlimited" but in the board meetings he's not saying "how can we save our customers more money?" he's saying "how can we make more money?".

I hope people don't start putting Sprint (of all companies) in the same boat as they do with Google, as some customer loving company who's main goal is for happiness and peace haha. Truth of the matter is, neither Sprint or Google are like that, and money is their goal. Sprint will go tiered...no chance that they won't eventually. They'll milk their unlimited as much as they can, sure, but every major carrier will be tiered at some point.

 

[Detonation]

I'm wondering if locking in unlimited data is even going to be worth it....what's to stop them from just throttling your speeds once you pass the 2GB mark? T-Mobile offers unlimited data but openly states you'll be throttled after 5GB.

 

[SquireSCA]

I'm wondering if locking in unlimited data is even going to be worth it....what's to stop them from just throttling your speeds once you pass the 2GB mark? T-Mobile offers unlimited data but openly states you'll be throttled after 5GB.

Nothing will stop them. They can throttle you, and you will be forced to either pay $10 per GB of throttle speed, or pony up and pay for the next teir.

Either way, you will pay. The investors need more money, and you will provide that for them.

I understand the need for a company to make a profit. Without profit there is no corporation and without corporations there is no innovation.

Their job is to try and get as much money out of your wallet as they can. If they thought they could get you to pay $250 a month, that is exactly what they would charge.

At some point though, they will cross a line and there will be a void in the marketplace for a provider that charges in a given price point, and some carrier will target that and get a lot of business as a result.

 

[GohanBurner]

Can someone please explain the difference between browsing websites on your phone versus basically switching display modules and using your laptop? Playing games on 3G is almost unbearably laggy, so I can almost guarantee that there is as super low percentage of people who actually used it for "gaming". I can attest to that, I have tried it.

@BeardFace, you seem more butthurt than he is. It isn't that a few hackers are mad about this, its the simple fact that you use up 2GB insanely fast just browsing websites these days. Especially when browsing websites with flash content. I honestly believe the ridiculous PRICING of these tiered plans is just something to help out the internet providers out there. Because I know I would never pay for 2 sources of internet. Especially just because one is faster than the other.

 

[NeoandGeo]

Can someone please explain the difference between browsing websites on your phone versus basically switching display modules and using your laptop? Playing games on 3G is almost unbearably laggy, so I can almost guarantee that there is as super low percentage of people who actually used it for "gaming". I can attest to that, I have tried it.

@BeardFace, you seem more butthurt than he is. It isn't that a few hackers are mad about this, its the simple fact that you use up 2GB insanely fast just browsing websites these days. Especially when browsing websites with flash content. I honestly believe the ridiculous PRICING of these tiered plans is just something to help out the internet providers out there. Because I know I would never pay for 2 sources of internet. Especially just because one is faster than the other.

There is no difference between using a laptop and your phone. It's still data over the same 3G network. Verizon is duping people into paying twice for data, and putting a cap on that second buy as well. It's even more ridiculous that they want to still charge for tethering access even though the original data charge is capped.

 

[GohanBurner]

Can someone please explain the difference between browsing websites on your phone versus basically switching display modules and using your laptop? Playing games on 3G is almost unbearably laggy, so I can almost guarantee that there is as super low percentage of people who actually used it for "gaming". I can attest to that, I have tried it.

@BeardFace, you seem more butthurt than he is. It isn't that a few hackers are mad about this, its the simple fact that you use up 2GB insanely fast just browsing websites these days. Especially when browsing websites with flash content. I honestly believe the ridiculous PRICING of these tiered plans is just something to help out the internet providers out there. Because I know I would never pay for 2 sources of internet. Especially just because one is faster than the other.

There is no difference between using a laptop and your phone. It's still data over the same 3G network. Verizon is duping people into paying twice for data, and putting a cap on that second buy as well. It's even more ridiculous that they want to still charge for tethering access even though the original data charge is capped.

Yeah no kidding. Just reading that I was telling myself I was just going to stop using a cell phone all together. Because if you think about it...landline phones with UNLIMITED CALLING to anywhere and Road Runner internet would net you tons less in $$$ per month than if you had just used Verizon. The only fall-back is that can't bring it with you. That's all we're really paying for, the portability.

 

[jntdroid]

There is no difference between using a laptop and your phone. It's still data over the same 3G network. Verizon is duping people into paying twice for data, and putting a cap on that second buy as well. It's even more ridiculous that they want to still charge for tethering access even though the original data charge is capped.

I'm no expert, but I know a guy who works on the "backend" for AT&T and they can most definitely tell when someone's tethering a laptop or some other device... possibly due to a difference in packets? I don't know...