Verizon CEO: tiered data plans coming in 4-6 months 52
The all-you-can eat data buffet will soon become one of those stories you tell your kids about the good old days. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said recently that the company would soon do away with unlimited data plans, opting instead for tiered pricing. This follows the same move by AT&T earlier this year and a recent admission from Sprint CEO Dan Hesse that his company may need to make the same change. Seidenberg said Verizon's data plans would differ from the way AT&T has structured their plans, but did not elaborate on how.
"We're not sure we agree yet with how they valued the data," he said at a recent investor conference. The new plans are expected to roll out in the next four to six months. The company would not comment on what the pricing would be for the new plans.
The new era of high-speed data and mobile devices that more resemble computers than phones have pushed the wireless providers' networks to the limits of their capacity. The telecom giants have had to spend billions of dollars on their networks to cope with demand, which is Verizon claims to be growing faster than the network capacity can be expanded (demand has yet to outstrip capacity, it’s just catching up quickly). Executives in those companies have been forecasting the end of unlimited data for quite some time now.
Seidenberg also took the time to call on device manufacturers to start producing LTE hardware. "At some point, [they] will get with the program," he said, addressing the growing popularity of LTE among cellular network operators. Of course, with no large-scale LTE deployments on which to sell said phones, manufacturers are going to continue to be reluctant about producing compatible hardware. Chicken and the egg, as they say.
Source: Wall Street Journal
52 Comments
Coming in 4-6 Months - one more reason why I'm not a Verizon customer!
I'm happy that I'm a Sprint customer. But let's not kid ourselves into believing this is not going to happen on all carriers. Sadly, I think unlimited data's days are numbered. :-( Sprint already has the $10 premium for 4G phones. Change is coming.
If Sprint can hold out for six months longer than VZ, they might become a serious player in the mix.
sadness
Indeed. Sprint is next. *sigh*
$$$$$ is in every CEO eyes just another way to take more money from everyone
I still don't see how they can change anything and not break terms of contract? I say terms, it should be 'Verizon can do what they want as long as it makes them money and rapes the customer'.
good point does that mean I have to sign another contract???
IF so I'll say bye bye
they wont change your plan unless/until you renew your term by upgrading your phone. treat your pre gently, my friend.
They can't change your plan. Your options are to either buy devices without a contract subsidy or to buy 1 year device contracts on a line that doesn't need unlimited data (maybe a kid's line?) and then keep switching that device to your line while switching the old device to the line you just extended.
Wondering how "mobile hotspot" service gets changed...
Ugh, that sucks. I'm gona have to turn off all my automatic background data stuff and need WiFi everywhere I go now. And Sprint users, dont gloat. They might be doing the same. Too many damn smart phones out there.
Reminds me of how banks got us hooked on ATMs... Introduced them as a feature, gradually made them all but mandatory (even charging new fees to use a *human* teller at one point), and finally started charging ridiculous fees once everyone came to rely on them. :/
That depends a little on your "bank". Every credit union "bank" I've dealt with so far actually reimburses out-of-network ATM fees at the end of each month.
Time for HP to buy T-mobile from Deutsche Telekom and offer unlimited data for all PALM users! Talk about an incentive to draw users to the WebOS system!!!!
They won't break contract. As contracts expire and customers renew, they'll be forced into a tiered data plan.
they don't "renew" contracts unless you upgrade your phone. if you keep the same phone they just leave you on that plan and there is no "contract" to break. gonna start taking extra good care of my Pre, and buy an extra from ebay...
Didn't they say that 4-6 months ago as well?
Well guess I'll stay and be grandfathered in with current plan. :O
one more reason to keep my Pre+ forever. they can't force me to a new data plan unless i upgrade my phone...
They can only force you to a new plan if you buy a subsidized device.
so your grandfathered in with your data plan @ 3G speeds... Once we all move & upgrade to 4G with the aditional charge does that void the data to a new one thus placing you in the 'limited' data playground
not if I'm still using my 3g-only phone.
I'll just pay full price for new phone possibly. But really if they are more realistic than ATT it would not be so bad. I mean if it is just the people tethering that are really abusing the data, then they should just come out with packages that would just affect the people tethering so they have to pay extra and make it so that the smartphone users could affordably still use data. That may be wishful thinking though.
I don't use my Pre to actually surf the Web a lot. I go on occasionally. Currently I am not using streaming music a lot either. But I do use apps that use the internet for information. and the Pre its self uses a lot of data just syncing contacts, calendars, apps, etc. I find that even though I am not "Using" a lot of data by browsing or music, that if I look on my Sprint account, I have used about 1.5GB of data between my wife and I just by apps and syncing.
so your grandfathered in with your data plan @ 3G speeds... Once we all move & upgrade to 4G with the aditional charge does that void the data to a new one thus placing you in the 'limited' data playground
I'm thankful to be grandfathered into an unlimited plan. Normally, a carrier will not take such things away even with an upgrade. However, it looks like we must all be careful of the data minefield that we are treading into now.
they so full of crap... Sprint if you do it it's just for the money..sprint has plannend in advance with there 4g network... They will not have data problems and they know that...but the band width that verizon and at*t has is not really that wide that's why there having issues
technicaly they would have to stop taking new customers but instead they limit the data for there customers so they can add more customers to there very limited frequency band width..so pathetic...
and again no one speaks out the truth everyone sees the dollars...
this country is worse then some corupt african dictator state..
if the palms are not greased they rip you off..all I can say is.. Sprint don't you dare to follow this is your chance to finally get hella new customers...
Is anyone here grandfathered in on AT&T unlimited data? Are you able to cross platforms and still keep unlimited? For example, if you had the BlackBerry unlimited data plan (slightly different than the regular smartphone data plan), were you able to activate a Palm device and keep unlimited? Two Verizon reps, whom I coerced into speculating, both said they didn
That could be an issue. The blackberry data system is setup slightly differently from the other smartphones. Switching to or from a BB could actually be an issue in the future forcing you to update your plan.
Yes, I'm grandfathered in on an AT&T unlimited data plan. I was allowed to keep the plan when upgrading to an iPhone 4 (i.e. didn't make me choose a tiered data plan when purchasing a subsidized phone and extending my contract). I was also able to switch my unlimited data plan from an iPhone unlimited data plan to a smartphone unlimited data plan when I switched to the pre plus. So, yes, AT&T will let you keep/switch unlimited data if you're grandfathered in regardless of the type of smartphone you're using.
Yes, it's fast, really fast. And we intend to keep it that way by not allowing people to use it!
Rule the Air - if you can afford it!
About time, I can not wait to get my bill lower. My wife only uses about 100Mb a month on her Pixi and I use about 500 on my Pre.
Apple says, "There's an app for that."
Verizon says, "There's a charge for that."
honestly I don't need a cell phone or especially a data plan that badly. I don't even like spending the $84 and change now with my Sprint bill which is cheap compared to what my friend is paying on Verizon...less then half.
Anyway, if they do decide to go this way, Sprint, and it ends up costing me more money I'll simply get rid of my phone all together. It's nice to have and I certainly use it a lot but I don't need it. Anyway, my 2 cents and I'm sure I'm of the vast minority when it comes to that sentiment.
Signed, person that is currently clung to his "smart phone"
It used to be that I was concerned about this. On my old phones, my wife and I would use 1 to 4 gigs of data each month on our Sprint plan. After I got my Pre, our data usage dropped dramatically, and now that she has one too, I expect it to drop even more.
Why? All because of wifi. We have wifi at home, and we find wifi when we are out. It amazes me how many places have free wifi. Sometimes you have to register or ask for the password, but it is available a lot of places nonetheless.
I'm actually interested in seeing what the tierd plans may offer. It may be an opportunity for us to save some money.
**sigh** danm evo 4G you brought the doom upon us
Verizon doesn't have an EVO 4G.
Sprint is only saying what Verizon and AT+T are saying because Sprint needs some help when it comes to making money, so they've GOTTA follow the other rapists to stay in biz... otherwise Verizon will rape Sprint, which will in turn lead to Verizon raping everybody.
I'm not sure this is all a bad thing. Those who want to use the data plan heavily pay the price for that rather than essentially all data users paying for more than what they really use. For example, why pay $30 or more per month if you are one of the people who uses 200 MB or less per month? Now, you pay $15/mo for that on AT&T.
Just out of curiosity, I checked my usage for my last billing period. We used about 850 MB for that whole month - that's both my and my wife's phones. And, I use my phone heavily for work email, personal email, browsing, facebook, Exchange ActiveSync, etc. Frankly, if I don't need unlimited and Sprint can come up with a way to change the plans so I'm paying an amount that is a little closer to what my actual usage costs, I'm all for it. Let the heavy users pay $100 or more a month if they want unlimited.
I'm still confused as to why we are going towards charging by amount downloaded/uploaded versus a capped bandwidth at varying price points like our ISPs.
Me too!!
Hopefully people will start waking up and wondering the same thing...
If unlimited somehow goes away on sprint, I'll just cancel data and go back to basic phone, I can live without it.
I think its a good way (from the carrier perspective) to cause people to think about their data usage before they go downloading GBs and GBs of data. I'm not exactly the craziest consumer at 650MB/month, but for the folks who are using 5GB+ of data a month, assuming the tiering is similar to AT&T, there will be a significant price to pay. Either they will a) leave the carrier entirely b) use less data c) pay the exorbitant prices.
More often than not, most people will go with a & b, making the network much more "consistent" for the rest. Better believe though, unlimited wireless data is coming to an end for every body.
And yet....the keep pushing data heavy devices and advertise the hell out of them.
Maybe their LTE will be tiered, I'd be happy with all you can eat 3G ;)
Is it insane to think that they should just go back to the "Per MB Charge" but just change it to either a 500MB or 1GB minimum? I like AT&T's idea, but 200MB for $15 seems a bit low, and $30 for 2GB seems a bit high.
Perhaps a $5 minimum package for 500MB and add $10 per GB used on top of that. Figure if the user tethers and uses the 'invisible' 5GB cap, they are out $55 for the month - if they go over that, they pay $10 per GB used - so these people using 50+GB get a nice $500-600 bill at the end of the month. The rest of us using 1-2GB's just get a tiny $20-30 bill every month, just like we do now.
Seems pretty simple to me!
AND A QUICK PS: Everyone is correct that as long as you keep your current phone, you are grandfathered in, but soon, those GSM/GPRS/CDMA/EVDO devices won't work in many markets as the LTE/WIMAX/HSPDA+ rollout hits and they turn off the old stuff...
they were giving us unlimited data at a time when it wasn't worth trying to browse the web with your phone. now that the phone specs are becoming somewhat decent, they're taking that privilege away from us. all the carriers blow
the twenty dallor data plan is probably going to be for the usage of 4 gigs...scary? I get close to 7 each month on my pre plus and every mega byte you go over it's like an additional 10 bucks.? 15 dallors for two gigs... How and the world can someone not go over two gigs in a month crazy??? I can almost guarantee that this is going to be the structure of the data plans now..People abusing the tithering option might have ruined it for us all. Oh yeah I use the hotspot occasionally maybe a gig or so, I do all my bowsing on my phone for the most part.
Hopefully, Verizon will be more honest about it that AT&T. I had a service rep tell me my computer datacard account was a "grandfathered unlimited plan" with a 5 gigabyte limit. In the end, the rep revealed that AT&T has rederfined "unlimited" to mean 5 gigabytes.
I will be surprised if this doesn't apply to their smart phones soon.
I don't understand where the telecommunications industry is going with all this.
Lets look at the movie rental industry. Netflix and Blockbuster, Hulu and other media networks, Apple and Google..... All want to provide full-on steaming HD media services at some point in the future. These services alone would require unlimited bandwidth because the amount you consume could be very difficult to measure.
Enter tiered pricing. People won't want to pay out of the ass for accidentally going over their alloted bandwidth per month, and will eventually give up on the media providers.
It's like the human body feeding off it's own organs. You will only survive for so long until you kill off your own resources.
Where do the telecommunications industry think it's going to get it's recession plagued customers from? I'm lucky I only consume about 5gb a month,but that's the limit of Sprint's 'unlimited' data plan anyway. What happens when I go over by a gig one month? Do I pay hundreds in overage fees?
No thanks. I'll go without TV before they rape my pocketbook.
I'm going to go out on a limb here......
One has to believe that even with all this new and wonderful hardware if it's really about "bandwith".
Between aquiring new customers and retaining the old ones, I'd bet they're all just treading water. So how do you make money if your customer base isn't growing.... Simple. You "farm" (sales term) the existing ones and in this particular case, offer tierd data plans.... Just saying......
Here's my other X file food for thought...
What if the phone companies were secretly getting into bed with the internet companies offering wifi. You force customers into tierd data plans, and then people start to rely heavily on public places/businesses offering wifi. Business then pay the isp's for the wifi, which is a win for us right? Wrong. The isp's begin to start experiencing excessive "network" traffic and at that point the isp start's forcing each business into a tierd data plan. At which point "we the people" start paying the business to use what use to be "free and unlimited" wifi. Wake up my friends.... Hmmmmmm....
so no more falling asleep in the chat rooms & blog forums huh? ...lol
Do I like the convenience of an internet connection in my pocket to catch up on email or check a movie time? Absolutely! Do I absolutely need it? No.
A buddy of mine has a prepaid phone he uses for occasional calls home, etc. He pays Big Red $30 every other month. I can envision myself going in a similar direction if the carriers keep this up. My cellular phone was once a gotta-have-it item. But as the carriers make it more expensive to carry it, I feel less and less desire to pay. So go ahead and raise your prices, change your plans. Do whatever. The $200/mo you get from me for 4 lines will go bye-bye :)