Verizon Revamps Plans With More Data, Carryover Data, Unlimited 2G, and Higher Prices

[konqerror]

Hello from Europe. Writing this from my 300mbit fibre optics line for $24/mo (no data caps).
We have unlimited LTE (no data caps) for $45/mo and I find this expensive.

My friend from Romania enjoys 1000mbit fibre optics line for $12/mo.

$35 for 2GB?? Totally ridiculous. You guys are getting milked hard over there.

Romania per capita GDP = $9500
US per capita GDP = $53000

Translation: We make 5.6x more than he does. In fact if you take $12/month x 5.6 = $67.20. Google Fiber is $70/month.

Also, travel 3,000 miles and tell me how much data costs. Call somebody 3,000 miles away. In fact, my cell phone number is still from the other side of the country, and it doesn't make a difference. And we don't have to pay for 900 numbers to call the doctor, like the Brits did with NGN.

 

[bbbb4b]

Unlimited 2G! Sign me up!!

Ha! I was going to post exact same thing.

 

[sir1963nz]

The high cost of mobile service in the US has always amazed me. Just crazy.

Yep. I am off to the US in a few months, but I will be in London First so I will be picking up a new "Three" SIM there for use in the USA.

 

[Gasu E.]

OMG this is crazy! I live in London and I'm with Three UK which I find amazing, with £55 a month + £10 for insurance (£65 total) I got my iPhone 6 on day 1 with just £199 upfront and every month I have Unlimited 4G, Unlimited Calls for cellphones and landline, Unlimited texts and last but not least free roaming in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Spain, Macau, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland and the US + free calls or texts to english numbers while abroad. http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home
http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones (£33 a month without phone contract)

Now how this robbery can go on in the US??

To all those Europeans confused by US cell pricing: Europe has twice the population density of the US. That means the US needs about twice the number of cell towers to cover a population of a given size. That in turn means the cost per subscriber of providing coverage is approximately double. Yes, those were all back of the envelope calculations.

But don't feel bad too for us... we seem to pay less for Apple products, which you all complain about incessantly.

 

[crsh1976]

Are these for Canadian customers? I thought we had the monopoly on crap overpriced plans.

 

[gamrin]

Sadly, Verizon's prepaid plan is currently still the best: $45 for 3 GB on auto-pay. No "device fee," either. Buy an additional 3 GB for $20, or just under $7 per GB. For anyone who doesn't use an absolute ton of data, it's their best deal, IMO. We'll see if it changes once the new plans go live, though.

 

[kerrikins]

Seeing the complaints on here about the plans makes me want to laugh/cry when I compare it to Canadian plans. Want 2gb here? $90 with the major carriers.

 

[2ilent8cho]

For roughly the same money as their top plan the $110 , on EE in the UK i've got 3 iPhone SE's with unlimited calls and text and 20GB Data shared between the devices. US Carriers are really milking their customers for data charges.

 

[drewyboy]

Hello from Europe. Writing this from my 300mbit fibre optics line for $24/mo (no data caps).
We have unlimited LTE (no data caps) for $45/mo and I find this expensive.

My friend from Romania enjoys 1000mbit fibre optics line for $12/mo.

$35 for 2GB?? Totally ridiculous. You guys are getting milked hard over there.

Yawn, other one like you hu? We have to repeat the same thing over and over again. Romania... the size of Kansas, one of our states. You guys really no have perception of how big our country is and how much these carriers actually cover since you get signal in 97+% of our country.

I'm not saying we aren't overcharged, we are, but at least put it into perspective of how much coverage they have. And leave your European arrogance at the door please.

 

[Orlandoech]

Typical tyrannical USA corporations with no regulations by the USA government because they are too busy collecting money from these corporations making themselves more wealthy. Typical really.

Nothing new here, move along, as corporations and government don't want individuals whom can critically think for themselves, they wan't conforming sheeple cogs to be apart of their system to keep it running accordingly.

 

[markyr17]

Nah, no thanks. I'll stay with my Verizon Unlimited Data Plan for $29.99 a month thanks very much.

 

[coolfactor]

My monthly cell bill in Canada is $100. That includes 300 weekday minutes (free after 6pm), unlimited Canada-wide texting, and 6GB of data. No long distance. No international texting. Only 3 voicemail messages. But hey, I get 6GB of data!

Yah, these Verizon plans are cheaper than what I'm paying, and I own my phone 4x over... and iPhone 4, in 2016. Rogers is laughing all the way to the bank.

 

[mantan]

Apple charges high prices and is insanely profitable and people around here cheer when it's reported.

Another company charges high prices with a lot smaller margin...and they get booed out of the room.

 

[QCassidy352]

To be clear for those in other countries, Verizon is the most expensive carrier we have, and they only get away with it because they have the best coverage.

My family pays $164/month for 4 smartphones on AT&T with 20gb shared data and unlimited text and talk. So $41 each for 5 gb data (with rollover). I don't find that to be particularly bad for LTE coverage and no dropped calls pretty much anywhere I've ever been in the US.

Edit: to clarify, that's $164 all-in, as in the true out of pocket cost, not the quoted price.

 

[avanpelt]

Unlimited 2G?! On Verizon?! That's a cruel joke.

When I used to see the "3G" symbol on the Verizon network on my newer iPhones, I knew data was going to be horribly slow. But they're not even giving you unlimited 3G! That's pathetic! Way to go, Verizon!

The fact that they're making people on 8 GB and smaller plans pay extra for the "privilege" of having unlimited 2G is a huge slap in the face. There isn't much you can do on Verizon's 2G network in my experience beyond e-mail and maybe surfing text-heavy sites. VoIP is certainly not going to happen reliably over Verizon's 2G network and you can definitely forget about video calling altogether.

 

[freepomme]

T-Mobile is the #1 and best carrier in the United States!

 

[coolfactor]

Unlimited 2G. UNLIMITED 2G??? WHAT YEAR DO YOU THINK WE LIVE IN? How about we get unlimited 4G for $20/month instead of this INSANE rip-off!

You're complaining about getting something for free? And you want unlimited for $20 a month? They've tried that, it failed. Too many people abused it.

 

[macduke]

So at a time when you have companies like T-Mobile dropping prices, Verizon decides to increase them across the board? Ok…I have a feeling T-Mobile is going to respond to this by giving more data for the same price, lol, and probably throw a limited time cheaper promotion on top of it for family plans or something.

I'd complain more, but last month Verizon hooked me up with 12GB of data/mo for free for the next two years. I pay $80/mo for 24GB of data, and with my work discount it's actually $64/mo. So I'm good for a while, lol. Although that 4GB plan for $50/mo is tempting with the rollover and throttled unlimited. It's rare that I have back-to-back months with high-data usage. With my discount it's $40/mo. Hmmm…4GB with monthly rollover and throttled unlimited, or pay $24/mo more for 24GB of data. Tricky! I haven't yet really taken advantage of my increased data plan, but it's mostly because I've been insanely busy moving. The app shows we've used only 1.3GB in the past two weeks, lol, and for two days we didn't have internet at home.

 

[bn-7bc]

To all those Europeans confused by US cell pricing: Europe has twice the population density of the US. That means the US needs about twice the number of cell towers to cover a population of a given size. That in turn means the cost per subscriber of providing coverage is approximately double. Yes, those were all back of the envelope calculations.

But don't feel bad too for us... we seem to pay less for Apple products, which you all complain about incessantly.

Well this might be aplicable to centrel, south and easterm eyrup, but for scandinavia esp Norway you have spread ( and small population) add a chalanging topography and you end up with a lot of towers for relatiwky few ( in norways case about 5 mill) people and rhe costs of running a nerwork are significant

 

[Sakurambo-kun]

You Americans really get screwed over on mobile data charges. I pay £20 (aproximately $5) a month in the UK for unlimited data. And I use it- I stream all day every day pretty much non stop.

 

[smirking]

To everyone outside the US, let me tell you...15 years ago, in the jungles of Thailand, I had cell service at a time we barely had decent service in the cities of the US.

I'm not discounting greed as a significant factor in the sad state of our wireless services, but it's actually not surprising to see third world countries have better wireless infrastructure than the USA because they didn't have as much (or in some cases hardly any) infrastructure tied up in land lines or early generation broadband.

Quite frankly, the same phenomenon could be observed for a while in some rural places in the US. I live in Silicon Valley and even now it's not a surprise for me to go someplace that's mostly rural and find faster wireless and broadband when 20 years ago some of those places barely had telephone service.

 

[Orlandoech]

Apple charges high prices and is insanely profitable and people around here cheer when it's reported.

Another company charges high prices with a lot smaller margin...and they get booed out of the room.

Funny how that works isn't it?

 

[Sketchr]

Yawn, other one like you hu? We have to repeat the same thing over and over again. Romania... the size of Kansas, one of our states. You guys really no have perception of how big our country is and how much these carriers actually cover since you get signal in 97+% of our country.

I'm not saying we aren't overcharged, we are, but at least put it into perspective of how much coverage they have. And leave your European arrogance at the door please.

And, I'm happy not to be paying the taxes due in europe...

 

[HopefulHumanist]

You're complaining about getting something for free? And you want unlimited for $20 a month? They've tried that, it failed. Too many people abused it.

It's only free with the XL and XXL plans.

 

[alphaod]

Folks really need to stop comparing their country the size of one of the US states service provider plans to the US plans. If you compared cell phone service of other big countries the US is actually not that bad at all. If the US was the size of just one state, then we would also have unlimited data plus a cow for $20/month.