Verizon Introduces 'Share Everything' Service Plan for Up to Ten Devices

[zorinlynx]

I figured with all the additional bandwidth LTE has, that data would become cheaper per GB, since there's that much more capacity.

I guess I was naive. What's the point having three times the speed when the amount you can use total remains the same or goes DOWN for the same price?

 

[troop231]

Hurry up with shared data plans ATT!

 

[dstemm]

No the real rip-off is $30 for a feature phone.

Exactly! Why is the monthly plan more for a smartphone vs a regular phone? And why is there even a monthly charge for the tablet if all it uses is the data portion?

 

[cadillac1234]

Hurry up with shared data plans ATT!

Verizon is counting on AT$T to make their shared plan seem reasonable by comparison

 

[bossxii]

WTH? $40 for a smartphone to "access" the data plan. Sad, lame, and other words I cannot say here.

I don't mind paying $100 bucks for 10gig of shared data... but screw paying "access" charges. Thankfully my $75/mo for unlimited Data will remain in my LTE iPad and I'll gladly pay full price for any upgrades vs getting hosed into one of these plans.

 

[NAG]

I figured with all the additional bandwidth LTE has, that data would become cheaper per GB, since there's that much more capacity.

I guess I was naive. What's the point having three times the speed when the amount you can use total remains the same or goes DOWN for the same price?

Bandwidth doesn't change where the bottleneck is in this instance.

 

[bevo]

I was hoping this would be decent, I'm left being confused.

I'm no idiot, but this pricing is ridiculously complicated.

Was looking at adding my wife to my plan because she wanted an iphone. I feel like I would be getting bent over. I use about 1.3-1.5 gigs/month right now. She'd prob be less than 500 mb a month.

Too pricey.

Wish there was a way to protest this crap. These carriers are just twisting us clean.

 

[Xenomorph]

Well, it's NOT perfect, but I'll take it... as soon as AT&T gets it.

Right now, with my 700 Minute family plan with AT&T, my setup is like this:

$70 for "700 minutes" (we use hardly any).
$30 for my iPhone's "unlimited data" plan (with its 3GB cap).
$30 for unlimited messaging (we go through thousands).
$10 for daughter's "dumbphone."
$10 for wife's "dumbphone."

$150 for just *me* to have an iPhone, no tethering, and my wife and daughter limited to their basic phones.

With this new plan (if AT&T styles it like Verizon's), for another $40, we could get a 4GB shared plan, iPhones for for both my wife and daughter, and tethering enabled for all of our devices.
It's still a bad price, but better than dealing with terrible $20 plans for them and/or paying another $20 on top to get tethering on one device.

 

[BJMRamage]

This would be $10-15 more per month than my current AT&T plan.

Ridiculous.

Especially with the IDEA of Unlimited MInutes and Texts.
who cares about unlimited Voice. I have AT&T rollover and have the maximum 7k-8k per month in minutes to use. Wife and I use 40 if we decide to talk a lot on the phones.

no thanks Verizon.
Just charge X amount and figure out a Data usage for minutes and texts and say smartphone Data usage now includes minutes and texts for X price. and add to the X for each additional GB Data

 

[GizmoDVD]

This is beyond bad. Hope AT&T does better.

 

[mknopp]

actually seems surprisingly affordable... until the $40 per device...

That $40 per month is for the no longer optional unlimited minutes an text. Basically, people were getting to where they didn't care about talk and text and weren't paying the outrageous fees for them. So, Verizon basically made it non-optional to pay for their most expensive unlimited plans.

What a bunch of great guys! NOT!

Basically, this is only a good deal if you were buying the highest plan of everything that Verizon offered. If you didn't this is a ripoff.

Congratulations Verizon. I was seriously looking at switching to you when I heard about the shared data. But now you have ensured that I will not be your customer. Morons!

 

[Tomacorno]

I'm absolutely shocked that Verizon came out with a shared plan that is actually worse than the existing plans

Wouldn't be bad until they threw in the per device charge. I wonder how many MBAs were needed to come up with that.

THAT is what caught me by surprise. I have 4 phones on a family plan. Two dumb, two iPhones with unlimited data. One of my kids is going off to college soon. My wife asked about getting the college bound kid an iPhone, being an idiot I said, Verizon is supposed to be offering shared data plans this summer so lets wait and see what our options are. This does not look like a good option at all. Price goes up, data goes down. $40 to have a smart phone on the line compared to $10 per extra phone now. Ridiculous data prices - whether you are a power user getting way to little data or a user who does not use a lot of data making the prices even lamer. In my current situation I use a lot of data and my wife uses hardly any, however, paying $60 for unlimited on two phones vs paying $60 for 2 gig across all devices? Plus, my current corporate discount is on the main line of the family sharing plan and the additional phones are $10 each. By the new plan, the amount I get a discount on presumably drops to $40.

I am not sure but it is possible that the new plan finally makes my discount irrelevant in my choice of carrier. Weird.

 

[bevo]

so if I'm doing my math right

For 2 iphones, its $80 ($40 x2 ) + $70 (4gb data), $150 + taxes as final cost?

 

[iJon]

I'm loving these new prices. I recently moved somewhere that ATT sucks and have been wanting to switch to Verizon.

We have 3 iPhones, need unlimited minutes and have an iPad 3. To get that same deal on Verizon old plan it would cost me about $320, mainly the data that's getting me. Since I have WiFi most places, I don't need that much data.

This new plan would cost me about $200 for all 4 devices. That's how much I'm paying on ATT for just 2 phones, no unlimited minutes.

Too bad this deal isn't good for some people, but it's super good for someone like me.

 

[Rocketman]

My plan has a smart, a dumb, a dead hot spot, and I might add a tablet.

I pay something like $140 now and this plan would bring me to $150.00 but have an activated dedicated wifi hot spot in a modem only location.

The modem is slow but has no usage limit.

I would be concerned the hotspot would encourage use over 2GB the smartphone does not.

Furthermore $50 for the first GB AFTER already paying an access fee compares horribly to ATT DSL at home for $30/month for by comparison unlimited usage. The mobile premium is something like 20x or more.

 

[AbSoluTc]

How can ANYONE justify or like this??

WTF Verizon? Really? Shared data at $100 a month for 10 gigs and then you're going to charge any smartphone $40 dollars to use it? HUH? What in the good **** are you smoking?

 

[tigress666]

Are you kidding me? How in the world unless you don't use much data and use the phone a lot is this a good deal?!

My roommate and I are paying about 100 dollars total to share a minutes plan with separate data plans (unlimited, grandfathered). Even if we decided to step down to limited we could pay the same and get 3 GB each.

The cheapest plan there would cost us 130 dollars and we'd have to share a whole 1 GB (two smartphones at 40 each plus the 50 dollars for the whole gigabite).

Am I doing my math wrong cause honestly I really don't see how they are going to get anyone but suckers who don't do the math and just see that they can share a data plan.

Hell, even if I went to my own plan and didn't share it would cost me 50 dollars which would still be cheaper than that (and get more GB of data).

I really really fail to see why that is such a good deal.

 

[Reddmanz]

Wow. Prices for this absolutely blow my mind. Makes me happy to be paying £35pm for unlimited minutes/texts and (tethered) data.

 

[npro1464]

Yeah, this family share plan is pretty much the most cockamamie thing proposed since the Spiderman bases. Why in the world would I or anyone want to go along with this? It's such a radical increase, and forcing us off our grandfathered plans to get us over to these new plans is bs!

I have the Galaxy SIII on pre-order so I could get past this, but at this point I might just cancel it. I could afford to scheme out how to keep unlimited data forever, but my parents will eventually want/need to upgrade. I can't lock them into another 2 yr contract and force them to deal with this. I'll look elsewhere. Maybe I'll use a prepaid plan and use a $400 Galaxy Nexus or go to Sprint or T-Mobile. Either way, I don't think I could sign on for another 2 years of this bs.

 

[dokujaryu]

How many users do you have?
because if it's 2, your paying too much w/AT&T. But if it's 3, you miscalculated your new Verizon bill.

It's two. The 180 is including taxes and crap, so it's not totally fair. And yeah, you don't have to tell me I'm paying too much.

Family Talk 700 with Rollover is $60
I was forced to get Family Unlimited Messaging which is $30.
Unlimited data $30
Second line $10
Unlimited data $30

So, it's really $160. The savings to me is I don't have to spend $30 to get 2gb of data for my iPad (which I don't do now), and I get unlimited minutes, which I don't get now, and the speed of that data can be LTE. Plus tethering, which is also additional on AT&T that I don't get now.

So, I think when everything is paid for, it'll be more like $200 on Verizon with all the taxes and adding the iPad fee. But I'll get tethering, ~9.5GB iPad data on LTE, and unlimited calling minutes. I'd be well into $100 more per month to get all those features.

 

[REDTAZ]

So I'm currently paying $226 for two iPhones (Unlimited Data) and three regular phones after a discount on the main line and get 1400 minutes and unlimited messaging. Both iphones combined use 4-6 gbd a month. The three regular phones I don't need data for since they won't use it all. My parents and grandmother (the three regular phones) can't deal with touchscreen phones, even less using data on them. How exactly does a plan like this benefit me in any way possible? The way I'm making it out to be I'll end up paying way more with this new plan structure considering the three regular phones won't be using data AT ALL. I could be doing my calculations wrong though. Anyone care to elaborate?

 

[jlc1978]

Especially with the IDEA of Unlimited MInutes and Texts.
who cares about unlimited Voice. I have AT&T rollover and have the maximum 7k-8k per month in minutes to use. Wife and I use 40 if we decide to talk a lot on the phones.

It really depends on your usage - I use my iPhone for work, and all my calls get routed to it so I use a lot of minutes per month.Realistically, mots plans have been unlimited with all the in - network - free evenings and weekends etc so this move is just a way to simplify plans and focus on what is the most expensive for carriers - data bandwidth.

Just charge X amount and figure out a Data usage for minutes and texts and say smartphone Data usage now includes minutes and texts for X price. and add to the X for each additional GB Data

Isn't that what they're doing - you get all the voice and text bandwidth you need for X - where is X is your estimate of how much data you will use; and then pay Y/GB above that?

The real challenge is of those of use who are used to unlimited data - one of my users streams netflix all day and hits the throttle cap regularly - with this new plan that could get real expensive.

 

[kgallag1]

This might quite possibly be the worst deal I've ever heard of!

 

[Thadon]

From the looks of it this would increase my bill by about $60. I don't see what is so good about this.

 

[NAG]

You know, assuming T-Mobile does gain full iPhone compatibility and they advertise prepaid heavily it could save them when AT&T inevitably comes out with a slightly worse version of this plan.

This is like the MCI long distance disruption all over again. (which ironically merged into Verizon)