Verizon Still Plans to Launch Family Data Plan With Single Account Billing This Year

[dgstorm]

Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo recently shared at a Deutsche Bank’s 20th Annual Media and Telecom Conference that Verizon Wireless still plans to rollout a Family Data Plan with single account billing by mid-year of 2012. He indicated that Verizon has been studying the issue for over a year now, and they believe they have a viable option to implement. These new data plans will be able to be shared among multiple devices. Shammo elaborated that it is, ”a very complex equation because we have to make sure that it’s good for Verizon and it’s also good for our customer.”

He continued that Verizon envisions that this type of plan makes more sense for some consumers as more people find themselves with multiple devices in the household all connecting to the LTE network. Shammo continued with,

“So when you think about connecting the devices to the network, it’s more than just a smartphone and a tablet. It’s more around everything that happens in our daily lives. So when you talk about data sharing, you talk about having the ability to connect more devices without having to in essence pay more for a bundle. So when you think about connecting the devices to the network, it's more than just a smartphone and a tablet. It's more around everything that happens in our daily lives. So when you talk about data sharing, you talk about having the ability to connect more devices without having to in essence pay more for a bundle."

Shammo also added that the double customers' data allotments promotion when they sign up for a contract with an LTE smartphone will continue for another two months. He intimated that Verizon was attempting to migrate customers from 3G to LTE, and added that it is "very critical for us and we're playing a very delicate balancing act here that I don't want to spend any more money on my 3G network."

Source: FierceWireless

 

[TheOldFart]

He continued that Verizon envisions that this type of plan makes more sense for some consumers as more people find themselves with multiple devices in the household all connecting to the LTE network.

Source: FierceWireless

So does that mean that the family shared data plan will only be available to family's that have all LTE devices?????????

 

[dgstorm]

I think that is eventually the direction they are going. From the way the transcript sounded, their plan is to migrate people carefully off of 3G over time.

 

[N4UPD]

Need to start getting more places with 4g and laying off the new devices until they have a large enough network to use them on.:icon_ lala:

 

[Str8Aro]

^ This. I travel for work occasionally, so 4G on my device but not for my wife. We don't have 4G locally, yet. If they don't want to spend anymore on the 3G network, they should accelerate the 4G rollout.

 

[gadgetrants]

OK, what the heck??? About the only thing I gleaned from that quote was..."So when you...it's more than..." :r_c:

-Matt

 

[SwiftLegend]

They would need to offer an unlimited family data plan or something high like a 20 GB limit. Could you imagine 5 different phones staying under 2 GB of data?

 

[gadgetrants]

They would need to offer an unlimited family data plan or something high like a 20 GB limit. Could you imagine 5 different phones staying under 2 GB of data?

Call me cynical, but the quote, "we have to make sure that it’s good for Verizon and it’s also good for our customer" said it all for me. I read that as: we are going to offer a promotion that in terms of money and GBs is worse than what is already available, but is more convenient in terms of how data are distributed across a shared plan. At the very best, I'm expecting something that functions as a break-even option for some customers, while it's worse for the rest. In particular, I seriously doubt they will grandfather "unlimited" data contracts into a shared unlimited plan.

Clearly for people like me (who have unlimited but admittedly only use about 1GB/month), the expectation is I will "trade down" to a 3GB or 5GB plan -- probably same total cost -- with the data shared. Again, "benefit" of shared data for me, "benefit" of NO-MORE-UNLIMITED-DATA for Verizon (yeah, yeah, I realize they could simply kill the unlimited option anyway).

-Matt