Tiered 4G data plans, according to VZW.

[Romple]

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam (pictured) said it would make sense for LTE subscribers to buy ‘buckets’ of data by the megabyte because “people will have four or five or perhaps even more devices they will connect to the network.”

Verizon to introduce tiered pricing for LTE - GSMA Mobile Business Briefing

Doesn't make sense to me, except from an evil business standpoint. Considering I use about 3 Gigs a month I'm not looking forward to this. Especially awesome since it costs less to transmit data over LTE than over a 3G network.

I just hope the tiers are along the lines of 0-5G, 5G-10G, 10G+ and not "$30/month for 100 Megs"... Seems like we're going backwards here. I'm having awful memories of paying by the minute on AOL...

 

[Darkseider]

We'll see what the hammerheads do. Personally couldn't give a damned less if VZW did something this stupid. I would just go to T-Mobile or Sprint and arguably by that time AT&T will have improved to the point of me considering them again.

 

[Backnblack]

Nothing is even said in that link about any kind of pricing/amount.....

 

[Ainvar]

heh VZW is an awesome network with hefty monthly fees. They will drive away a good chunk of their user base if they make this too $$$ which I am sure they will.

I use around 13-15 gigs a month on my droid but that is without doing any tethering. That is just streaming music and download data that I use and/or view on my phone.

They also already charge way too much for mobile broadband with the amount they give you. I mean 5 gigs is nothing in todays data heavy usage world that is comparing a DVD to a 3.5 floppy in you really think about it.

When I was down in Atlanta and the government agency I worked for I used about 20-25 gigs a month on my VZW card just for work.

I hope they really look at reality and not just $$$ when they do these tiered data plans, specially since they will be saving money using the LTE network.

 

[astevens54]

heh VZW is an awesome network with hefty monthly fees. They will drive away a good chunk of their user base if they make this too $$$ which I am sure they will.

I use around 13-15 gigs a month on my droid but that is without doing any tethering. That is just streaming music and download data that I use and/or view on my phone.

They also already charge way too much for mobile broadband with the amount they give you. I mean 5 gigs is nothing in todays data heavy usage world that is comparing a DVD to a 3.5 floppy in you really think about it.

When I was down in Atlanta and the government agency I worked for I used about 20-25 gigs a month on my VZW card just for work.

I hope they really look at reality and not just $$$ when they do these tiered data plans, specially since they will be saving money using the LTE network.

I agree. Verizon is expressive enough as it is. They will possibly push customers away. Me and my family as well, if they jack the prices up.

 

[JhankG]

If Verizon does this, you better believe AT&T will as well.

 

[adrynalyne]

If Verizon does this, you better believe AT&T will as well.

Or, other companies can use this as a selling point for their own services at a lower cost to steal customers.

 

[gixxerboy]

i think i may be switching over to sprint in the near future

 

[JhankG]

AT&T has been talking about doing this exact same thing for a while. Since a VERY small percentage of their iPhone users are the ones using a majority of the data on AT&T, they are considering charging those folks more.

 

[JhankG]

If Verizon does this, you better believe AT&T will as well.

Analyst: AT&T may offer tiered data plans for iPhone users

 

[640k]

yeah, this is pretty much old news. service providers have been talking about this for some time. infrastructure is expensive, regardless of methods implemented. to support large customer bases that only continue to get larger, substantially increases each time you upgrade.

the business models for what these companies are doing are definitely obsurd, but what can you do?

the best thing to happen would be for manufacturers to stop subsidizing phones so that service providers can compete solely on infrastructure and nothign else.

it's what the rest of the world does.

 

[bje1982]

heh VZW is an awesome network with hefty monthly fees. They will drive away a good chunk of their user base if they make this too $$$ which I am sure they will.

I use around 13-15 gigs a month on my droid but that is without doing any tethering. That is just streaming music and download data that I use and/or view on my phone.

They also already charge way too much for mobile broadband with the amount they give you. I mean 5 gigs is nothing in todays data heavy usage world that is comparing a DVD to a 3.5 floppy in you really think about it.

When I was down in Atlanta and the government agency I worked for I used about 20-25 gigs a month on my VZW card just for work.

I hope they really look at reality and not just $$$ when they do these tiered data plans, specially since they will be saving money using the LTE network.

they save $ using LTE and then use teired plans to make it end up being more $ for the customer so it looks like it is all about the paper

 

[dwagner88]

As tethering becomes more mainstream, and integrated into the mobile OS's, this sort of regulation is inevitable. Hopefully the prices won't increase much for average use.

 

[streetkid]

Fine with me as long as $30 remains unlimited, then they go down from there... I hardly hit 5gigs, I feel like I should be paying $10 a month for my usage, not 30.

 

[bje1982]

Fine with me as long as $30 remains unlimited, then they go down from there... I hardly hit 5gigs, I feel like I should be paying $10 a month for my usage, not 30.

thats the thing there probably wont be any "unlimited data" plans, there might be a $30 data plan but it would have a cap of data.