A while back Verizon decided to add $20 to the bill of anyone still on a grandfathered unlimited data plan. They have apparently been rolling this price increase in stages. I am personally an old Alltel customer. My data was built into my package. This is exactly the type of package that Verizon has purposefully skipped over so far. I was holding out hope that maybe I was overlooked and would never see the $20 price increase for my unlimited data. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case.
Verizon subscribers who have not seen the data hike yet are beginning to receive emails from Verizon stating that effective August 21st their bills will be increased by $20. This goes for every line with the feature. For my household that is an extra $40. I use about 50GB of data per month while my wife uses about 30GB. It is not uncommon for us to hit 100GB on any given month. My bill is currently $140 per month. This increase would bring me to $180 per month. That still beats the 80GB plan which is $360 a month. The smaller plans do offer Safety Mode which will auto throttle your connection once you hit your limit without charging you overages, but Verizon 3G is so painfully slow I just don't think I could handle it for more than two thirds of every month.
I have thought about purchasing a hotspot puck and just inserting my sim with unlimited data into it for household data then ditching my home internet. This would even out my monthly bills. Too bad Verizon doesn't offer an unlimited plan which includes home internet. Either way I'll be looking for T-Mobile to improve their signal in my region. I may have to give them another try soon.