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Verizon Ends Smartphone Subsidies
JoeyRox writes: Verizon has discontinued service plans that include subsidies for upgrading a smartphone. The new plans require customers to pay full price for their smartphones, either up front with a single one-time purchase, or by monthly payments. Unlike their previous subsidized plans, Verizon's new plans don't require a long-term commitment. Under the new plan, Verizon will charge flat fees for connected devices: $20 for smartphones and $10 for tablets. Subscribers will be able to pick from four data monthly packages to go with their devices: 1GB for $30, 3GB for $45, 6GB for $60, and 12GB for $80. The changes go into effect on August 13th. Existing subscribers will get to keep their current plans
"Existing subscribers will get to keep their current plans"
We've all heard that before.
So essentially, no change in the bill from what I'm seeing right now.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I predict this will drive down the average price of smartphones, as consumers are going to aim for lower cost options more aggressively. Average meaning that there will still be $700+ smartphones, but there should be growth in the $199 smartphone market.
It somewhat relates to the Apple versus Android divide, a lot of iPhone owners are using subsidized phones on contract, especially those using the latest model. When I was shopping around for pay as you go plans and a new phone, meaning I pay full price for my phone, I saw good options in my price range for Android and older iPhone models. I don't know how well Apple will fair if people are buying the previous model instead of the latest.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Bad link or did VZW pull it?
I guess you're overpaying or underutilizing.
If I switched from Sprint to this plan, my bill would increase quite significantly as well as suffering a data cap that is presently unlimited(as far as you can prove).
Sprint
Subsidized smartphone.
Unlimited plan
$80/month w/ 2Yr. contract. - Stand alone.
I'm paying $60/phone/month w/ discounted family plan.
And they're still charging too much for the amount of data.
No thanks.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts third party retailers like Best Buy, Costco, etc. I doubt the higher price per customer will make up for the volume of customers who will delay or avoid purchases at full price (particularly at the mid-to-high end). Will retailers continue to offer discounts on phones as a loss leader or take the hit to their revenue? Likewise, I expect demand for second hand phones to increase as well (leading to higher prices there).
It will also be interesting to see how this impacts VZW's customer numbers in the long run. They're somewhat safe in the short term as people are going to still be on their current contracts for a while. As the LTE phones are substantially more portable than the previous generations of CDMA phones and now new customers are no longer in a monthly contract, I would expect a decrease over time. I think they're over estimating their market power, but I guess only time will tell.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Sounds like a long-overdue simplification of their ridiculous & Byzantine pricing structure. Too late for them to keep me as a customer, but a step in the right direction.
A lot of people are going to choke on the idea of paying full price. $199 every 3-4 years doesn't seem like a big deal. $700 for a new iPhone sounds fucking horrible.
I also wonder how this will affect corporate customers as well who are used to getting say a 5c free or cheap from Verizon for their employees?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
A while back we were on Verizon, with the implicit subsidy until we paid the phone off. Two years are up, well, we did pay the phone off, and then I asked if we could have a bill reduction because of that. I asked for them to take the subsidy off. The look on the person's face was as if i just peed on them. How dare you say subsidy! We don't have a subsidy!!
For long time, Verizon had this unmarked subsidy in their bill. A lot of people forgot about it, and then that became pure profit to Verizon. It was never marked as "phone paydown" or whatever. Since people never saw it as that they paid for months and months for something that was already paid off.
I applaud whatever is making them more overt. TMobile maybe? TMobile has it very clearly marked in your bill.
Maybe this will make buying a Nexus phone finally make sense. Too bad the "Google Play Edition" program is dead. This could be good news for open source phone projects, and Firefox OS.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
that my cell phone company has managed to get me about to the old unsubsidized price over time. The trick they used on me was piling on "regulatory compliance" fees that they assume I'm too dumb to know aren't taxes (it's not a tax if you're pocketing the money).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Easier to understand when purchasing - unlimited talk and Text + 10GB of data for $80 (4GB is $60)
Everything is still to expensive. Hurray for being in the USA!
Verizon has been walking away from the subsidized phone model. You've been able to ask for a non-subsidized rate for a while now. The prices are even listed on their website. However, there is still a catch! The monthly installments for a new phone are at 0% interest. That means they are using your monthly service fees to pay the interest on the loan. Paying for the phone in full would be turning down a discount in terms of finance charges. I wonder if this will change when the new plan comes into effect.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Is there a pay as you go plan in the US that can be used with smartphones and doesn't have any monthly base cost, just per minute and per megabyte accounting? Maybe I am not understanding it right, but it sounds like Verizon wants $20 just for allowing a smartphone on their network, or what does that include besides a number that can be called?
It looks like Verizon's cheapest service option for Android is the $20 connection fee, plus $30 for the 1GB service.
Tracfone will give you Android on exactly the same towers for $20 for for a 3-month plan, no connection fee.
The Tracfone subsidiaries (PagePlus, StraightTalk, Net10) will also give you Verizon service at several different price points.
You can bring your 4G Verizon phone and avoid a new hardware purchase. If you bring it to Tracfone, you'll get triple the face value of your refills.
You can also get discounts on your refills at PinCheap.
A $20 monthly connection fee? Sounds like Verizon has a long way to go to match Straight Talk (CDMA where I live uses Verizon) at $45 month for 5-GB of full speed data, before dropping the speed. Verizon is hoping people don't notice the $20 monthly connection fee which is added to the monthly base charge, which makes it still to expensive for me with too little data. Also, $15 per month for each GB of data over the cap is quite excessive. No thanks.
We need a very simple regulation placed on all mobile carriers that operate in the US.
All service contracts must last for no more than 1 calendar month and may not contain any penalties for customers who decline to renew. 'Security deposits' and other horseshit won't be allowed either.
That way, when someone signs up with Verizon and gets a mystery charge that the customer service asshole won't remove or explain, they can just dump their stupid asses and try their luck with the next anti-consumer mobile carrier.
It shouldn't cost more than $25 a month, including all fees, taxes, surcharges per device for unlimited/unlimited/unlimited with maximum data rate full time.
Why do I say that? Think for a minute, how much bandwidth is used in those ulimited talk and text plans?
Based on some of the codecs in use, we see a wide range of usage from 21Kbps to 87Kbps, which I've averaged to 43Kbps for my math.
G.711 - 87Kbps
G.729 - 32 Kbps
G.723.1 - 22 Kbps
G.723.1 - 21 Kbps
G.726 – 55 Kbps
G.726 – 47 Kbps
G.728 - 32 Kbps
Taking the average of the 7, 43Kbps, and then multiplying out for a single day's usage, we get 434Megabytes of data usage to transport the voice call.
(43000 * ((60 * 60 * 24)) / 8 = 464400000.00000 or 464,400,000 or 464.4 MBytes per day * 30 = 13,932,000,000 - Just under 14GBytes per month in voice alone.
24 Hours of voice = 434 Megabytes of data per day, 14GBytes of data per month. We can get unlimited voice plans for about 20 bucks a month right? That means that 14GB of data is 20 bucks a month, cheaper if we count say several hundred texts to add more data usage during that month.
So why do they charge 30 bucks for 3 gigabytes of data????? It's because people are too stupid to know any better.
The uncarrier did it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to pretend T-Mobile is an angel, but I think they've truly changed the industry.
I'm not sure how they can do that efficiently. The SD specification requires that cards bigger than 32 GB use the exFAT file system, which is patented by Microsoft. It is a violation of the spec for a device to require reformatting such a card to something more sensible like UDF. Even if the phone manufacturer can afford to pay the SD and exFAT royalties, patented file systems must run in user space, which in theory makes them slower. Or has this been not a problem in practice?
Verizon Rep: "We have a 4GB plan for $120 a month...."
David Beckham: "That is not a good deal."
Is there a pay as you go plan in the US that can be used with smartphones and doesn't have any monthly base cost, just per minute and per megabyte accounting?
Ting's pay-as-you-go plan has a lower monthly fee ($6 plus usage). Talk, text, and data are extra.
it sounds like Verizon wants $20 just for allowing a smartphone on their network, or what does that include besides a number that can be called?
The line fee also includes unmetered incoming and outgoing domestic voice and text. Carriers have realized that with things like Skype, Hangouts, and iMessage/FaceTime, they can no longer get away with charging per minute for calls between smartphones.
So it's like an expensive on-contract MVNO? If that's the case, why even bother? I can already pay full price for my phone, but not be tied to a contract and get better value (more data, etc.) for my money.
$80 for 12GB is retarded. I can't imagine what life would be like if our landlines had that kind of price limitation.
When someone has to pay $750 for their next iPhone up front, I doubt that they will still be willing to $80 for an "unlimited" plan with a 3 GB data cap when they can get the same plan from someone like Cricket Wireless or Straight Talk for $45 a month.
This is Verizon trying to put the screws to Apple, which sells some of the most expensive--and most popular--smartphones and has consequently wielded more power than Verizon would probably like.
Hotels, airlines, car dealers, colleges, banks, hospitals, all masters of the hidden fee. (Source)
Ting comes close
1) 6 dollars a month per activated SIM
2) only pay for what you use (more like pay for what category you fit this month)
3) BYO phone (buy a BLU, or a nexus, or anything really.) T-mobile compatible GSM and some CDMA.
4) No extra charge for tethering your tablet. it just uses your data.
Check out their rates. I am a happy customer.
I was paying AT&T $160 for 2 phones, now I pay Ting $45 to $60 for 3 phones.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
In most Countries no contracts and paying up front for phones is normal business. The US was a totally different marketing system because phone makers saw the US as a gold mine for selling smart phones. Now I think the phone companies feel they have become the loser in the contract system. They get blamed for the big early termination fee's the excessive data costs. But their will be losers in having people buy phones up front or pay as you go. For one, I think Apple having a premium on phone prices may see a drop in sales. While other Android phones may attempt to capitalize by offering deals. This might actually be good in the end for consumers. They may see cheaper phones, and plans that directly reflect the cost of service and not devices.
In Israel, 4GB/month + unlimited calls costs 10.27$ (39 ILS, at 012mobile.co.il).
hemi
T-mobile was the first to respond most likely because they are the smallest. Typically, smaller competitors react to market changes faster than the more entrenched. But the change to post-paid has been coming for years, as all providers were losing lots of customers to MVNOs. It has been obvious ( looking at the market in the rest of the world ) that this is where the industry was going.
When this deal fell through, AT&T had to give TMobile a nice parting gift.. of 3 Billion dollars and some roaming agreements. This is when TMobile started to become a force. Between having cash for towers and customer acquisition, and better effecgive networking, AT&T was the one that helped TMobile move forward.
$20 per month for phone + $60 for 6GB I tether my phone a lot and on a month where I'm watching a show during my commute to work I'll usually use about 5GB. If I'm holiday I'll use up even more watching films in the evening.
So in the USA I'd have to pay $80 a month (before even considering the extra fee for tethering) which is £51! With-out a phone too!
I pay £15 a month for 100 Mins (which I never use), 5000 texts (which I never use) and unlimited data.
My home internet doesn't even cost £50, it's £26 for 60 Mbit/s fibre with no data caps. (I think there's some throttling if I download so many GB in a short period of time). How do they manage to charge so much more for less service? Is it just the lack of competition in many areas?