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Verizon Says It Knows You Don't Need Unlimited Data (digitaltrends.com)
Ed Oswald, writing for DigitalTrends: While the wireless industry is moving back to unlimited data, one carrier is not. Verizon chief financial officer Fred Shammo told attendees at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York on Thursday that his company doesn't think you need it, and slammed current offerings. "At the end of the day, people don't need unlimited plans," Shammo said. While this is not the first time he's said this -- in March he claimed unlimited data "doesn't work in an LTE environment," and in 2011 he helped Verizon move away from unlimited plans -- it's now an entirely different market.
I'm only level 23 and I need those pokemon NOW!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I would rather know what I am using and pay for what I use in at least a somewhat transparent fashion, than pay the exact same as all other customers and never really know what I am paying for. Verizon's system for me has been reliable and fast, and I pay for it, which I'm happy to do.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
I don't need infinite data. However, I do need a large amount of data without the fear of overage charges.
If they want to set a limit of say, 1 TB a month and then throttle, I'll consider that unlimited. But 15 GB and then overage charges? No, that's bullshit.
Just because you can't see an immediate need for something doesn't mean that it's not there. I don't get why people in cities get huge trucks, but I'm sure they have their reasons. I get unlimited data, not because I run around streaming movies, but because every now and then I need to not get dinged for every gigabyte over, especially when the gigabytes start climbing. It's fine if you don't want or can't offer unlimited data, but don't tell people they're wrong when they say they want or need unlimited data.
How about, if you have to have caps, you simply throttle speeds so that emails and navigation are still possible, rather than gouging people on overage charges?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
The problem is weather or not we NEED unlimited data. The problem is that we don't want to pay out the ass, at extortionate rates, if we happen to go over our allowance. I don't want to worry about a surprise $100 on my bill because my phone decided to download the latest OS update.
Well, it's what I got used to from Comcast.
Table-ized A.I.
There are two problems at work here:
1. Wireless companies 'overbook' their networks when they sell, sell, sell to too many people.
2. Too many people spend too much time mucking about with their phones
If people broke their addiction to their phones and spent more time doing other, more productive/creative/healthy things, then this wouldn't be a problem.
That being said, wireless companies also price-gouge everyone for their 'services' and it would be nice if they could be reined in somehow. They're almost as bad as the pharmaceutical industry.
Unlimited data requires infinite bandwidth which requires infinite power. We definitely don't need unlimited data.
We need max LTE bandwidth 24x7.
OK, sure, I don't need Unlimited Data. So that means it doesn't cost Verizon anything to offer it to me.
Likewise, I don't need unlimited voice call minutes... and it doesn't cost cell providers anything for giving it to me.
Almost every single cell provider, excepting the lowest tier pre-paid options (and even there declining),
does provide unlimited voice, despite nobody actually using/"needing" unlimited voice calls.
(nobody can actually use "unlimited" anything, if only because the length of a day is limited)
Obviously, people who use very little data will tend to seek out limited plans if they save $$$ that way.
Plenty of people do use alot of data though, and any limit just means a potential threat of getting hit with big charges/impinging on their usage.
The benefit/attraction of unlimited plans is essentially similar to insurance, in that even if your normal usage fits into X data limit 95% of the time,
an unlimited plan means you aren't hit for charges that extra 5% of the time.
In the end, it really just seems like Verizon is trying to avoid discounting their limited plans, because logically
if people are going to give up the protection of the "insurance" of unlimited plans, they will want a tangible benefit for doing so.
People don't "need" unlimited data, what they need is "unmetered" data.
In a LTE environment, someone can saturate the hell out of the cell and thus render everyone in a one mile radius of it unable to use it. That is the tradeoff of CDMA-based technology (LTE is a CDMA technology) TDMA-based do not have this limitation because you're limited to a time slot. TDMA however doesn't allow for low-latency applications and the more users there are, it slows down for everyone equally. So TDMA forces carriers to actually have enough capacity, while CDMA only forces carriers to make cells small enough to not be blown away by one user monopolizing it.
At the end of the day, "unmetered" is what all carriers should be aiming for, and only differentiating their plans by bandwidth pipes. eg a GSM/LTE 5G path would allow users to pay for "voice","voice, text and data", or "voice, text, data, video" or "voice, text, data, video 4K" Someone paying for a "4K" connection and not using it with a 4K TV still gets the bandwidth of a 4K connection to use, but a "IPTV" offering by the same carrier would suck up all the bandwidth allocated. 4K would be kinda wasteful on LTE, but beside the point.
Same with landlines. It doesn't matter that fibre is in the neighborhood, you want to differentiate the plan based on what the user intends:
A) 4$/mo Home security (approximately 5Mbps, bi-directional, good enough for a single HD stream at 10fps)
B) 15$/mo Basic Internet (Asymmetric 25mbps down, 5 up, good enough for two 1080p HD streams at 30fps or one 60fps (ATSC is 19Mbps, ATSC QAM-256 Cable is 38.8)
C) 25$/mo Basic Internet Family (Symmetric 80mbps, good enough for two 4K streams or 4 HD streams, essentially "4 20Mbps streams")
D) 50$/mo Deluxe Internet (Symmetric 160mbps, 4 4K streams, good enough to have family members stream to each other at 4K television quality)
E) 100$/mo Professional Internet ( Symmetric 1Gbit , basically capacity for 25 4K channels, or 100 HD channels, simultanously, basically this option is "I'm hosting everything at home, the cloud hosting can bite me")
In the case of C,D and E, it's assumed that people would be doing backups over the internet, likely to other family member locations, if not a cloud service. Once you get over 100Mbps it becomes viable to do so. So if you live in Seattle and your family lives in New York, you could effectively use each other as a backup and cut all the cloud storage providers out of the picture.
So when you're on your LTE device, you can access the storage from either location or while on the road.
Captcha: asinine
...as some may call it.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
Then don't buy their shit. PROBLEM SOLVED!!
This fucking cry baby act is getting pretty fucking old.
Oh, you do have to think about what people need, if you want to keep them as customers. You need to address both wants and needs, and sometimes its a bit like juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle.
That said, I hate mobile carriers. They are the scum of the Earth. The one really great thing about unlimited data plans is it makes it a snap to compare prices. Knowing what I know about carriers from years of experience I'll bet that's part of Verizon's reluctance; they HATE being in a commodity business where people just look at price and pick whatever's cheapest. They want you tied to their service and not unsure whether changing would hurt.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What we don't need is fees _after_ we use a service. I'm fine with data caps, but there needs to be a popup where you confirm the charges for the additional data, and each additional charge, not afterwards when you get slammed with a $300 bill.
There's an oligopoly of wireless companies and they all primarily use a model where you get billed _afterwards_ for as much as they can trick you into using. And you always pay far more for "overages" than the same service cost if paid upfront. And of course they decline to mention the taxes and fees when advertising wireless service, just to make the actual bill even larger than advertised.
Obviously, a model where most people use inexpensive phones they purchased upfront and use pre-paid services is much better. Especially one where you could choose from competing pre-paid service cards to refill your phone at a shop somewhere and still have the same phone number and phone. (does it work this way in the rest of the world? I thought it sorta did)
Nobody needs unlimited data, because nobody can use infinite amounts of data, they just need as much data as they use.
The problem is, nobody knows how much they need, because it's impossible for the average person to gauge data usage.
How much data does going to facebooks website take? Will I get the regular version of the site or the mobile version? Do I have a lot of pictures posted on my wall this time or not? How many times will I go there? Does my provider count facebook data against me or is it included in some fucked up social media exclusion promo? That's just one website. Throw in youtube, netflix, music streaming, mobile gaming, how is anyone supposed to fucking know what they need?
That's why everyone wants unlimited plans, so they don't have to worry about it.
unlimited voice minutes and unlimited text messaging or nationwide calling or ...
I'm with Shamu, here. Pay for what you use, instead of trying to squeeze an "unlimited" square peg into a finite round hole.
So Verizon just needs to bill $0.001 for every MB used, and everyone would be happy. No bullshit about tiers, overages, etc. If you're on WiFi all month, your cell bill would be $0. After all... "At the end of the day, carriers don't need tiered plans." Tiered data just "doesn't work in an LTE environment."
That leaves some paperwork/billing issues, but they're easily solved by only sending out a bill after a subscriber has accumulated at least $5 in charges, however many months that happens to take... Telna is a cheap wireline long-distance service that bills customers just like that, so it works.
And don't worry about voice minutes, as they're just small streams of data, themselves, and can go over WiFi as easily as it can cellular, leaving you again with a $0/mo bill when you're staying on WiFi all the time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
27 hour days?
You must be management.
Unless Verizoncan offer a metered plan with SIGNIFICANTTLY HUMONGUS savings compared to the unlimited competition, I'll choose unlimited any time.
Otherwise, the first time I slip up with an OTA update, the choice of a slightly more expensive unlimited plan will pay for itself.
Besides, peace of mind has no price.
Besides, is more easy to do our financial planning with a constant quantity than a variable one.
Besides, who knows what services can catch my eye tomorrow, either as a passing fad (leading to a couple of months spike) or as a daily driver...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
It is what they find convenient or desirable, which is to use the service to the capacity that is being offered without concern about the details of the frequency or amount one is using it, and not getting surprised later on with higher overage charges than one was expecting.
I have unlimited nationwide roaming and long distance on my cell phone plan, and it's kinda nice to be able to freely use my phone wherever I am without worrying about any long distance charges that would otherwise apply.
With so-called unlimited data, it's the same thing... or at least it should be.
If there are so many people using unlimited data services to such an extent as to affect a significant number of other customers that are not using as much data, I would think that the better thing to do would be to raise the price of the unlimited plan to reduce demand for it. While this might seem to bite for the consumer who wants a bargain plan, their provider does have a legitimate right to charge what they find appropriate for their service. If one can find a better deal with another provider, they should obviously go there.
Of course, that brings us full circle.... back to how so-called unlimited plans started in the first place... as a means by which the providers could be competitive, try and offer superior services to the alternatves, and try to win subscribers from their competitors through better pricing or plans that are more convient for the user.
In the end, though... the ball is not in the consumer's court on this. It's always been in providers. If offering real unlimited plans isn't viable, then they fucking need to just stop it, or raise the prices and stop trying to pretend that they can one-up a competitor when they clearly can't (or else they wouldn't be complaining about the volume of use by people who want unlimited plans in the first place).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The issue really isn't "unlimited data". The real issue is people would like to just go about their business and not have to constantly worry that they are "using too much".
They also said you don't need contracts anymore, but anyone who's twisted the arm of a Verizon rep knows the loyalty program for customers of 10 years+ are eligible for 2 year contracts at heavily discounted prices with enough data for the average user. 65 bucks for me with 5gb monthly.
If only it wasn't Verizon... because the way they've dicked with my bills over the years and required numerous angry calls to keep them in line has gotten pretty exhausting. They are one of the most dishonest companies I've ever dealt with besides Comcast and if it wasn't for the loyalty discount I would be done with Verizon by now.
Their prepaid 5GB plan is only $60/month, so I'm not sure you're getting a heavy discount on your $65 plan. Oh and you get 1GB "free" if you set up auto pay so it's $60/month for 6GB.
I'll settle for Kbps x 2.6 Gb per month.
the commons that is. The air waves. If we don't feel Verizon is doing a good enough job shepherding them then I don't see any reason to leave them in charge (outside of outdated notions of ownership that ought not to apply to a natural resource like airwaves).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Frankly, I don't need data period. I am around WiFi most of the time and can download music to listen to while driving.
However, I want unlimited data and selling people the things that they want is how capitalism works. Enjoy seeing T-mobile erode your market share.
Um, the term "use" certainly applies in a relatively normal fashion - whatever data distribution hub I'm connected to has a finite bandwidth, and every MB/s I'm using is a MB/s no one else can use. Unlike much infrastructure, usage level doesn't really increase the rate of wear and tear, but you still have a finite resource to allocate at any given moment.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And how people are supposed to do that if its illegal to compete with em in certain places?
Verizon and the rest assume that nobody needs that much data because the phone companies make you pay out the ass for any kind of reasonable mobile data. So I never use it unless in an emergency or trying to get a bus schedule (trackthet.com works quite well) in Boston. I'm halfway into my data plan and I've used 249MB for the month. I'll use WiFi or go without.
It doesn't matter what service - vzn, t-mobile, sprint, whatever. I'll only use their mobile data under duress.
4G is useless.
--
BMO
Instead of counting megabytes, like we used to count sms messages or minutes, just give unlimited usage, but limit the max speed. want the fastest possible speed, pay the highest price. lowest speed, lowest price. billing would be simple, but then there's no money made in simple billing.
Satellite Internet uses peak and off-peak pricing. Buyers of cellular service, on the other hand, have shown that they prefer simplicity in the billing arrangement.
But, I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
"There are some things money can't buy. For everything else there's WimpyCard."
It's amusing to see how going into short-term debt for fast food has become the norm since the Popeye era.
Whoo! I can get a T1 if I just spend a few thousand dollars for installation and then a few hundred a month for a measly 1.5Mbps that might be able to do a single 480P youtube stream.
Not all of us have options If I could get any type of wired/fiber connection at home I'd have that instead.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
You can still do without cellular data altogether, instead relying on home Internet, Wi-Fi hotspots open to the public,* and application support for offline use. Then you can use a flip phone for calls, or (on GSM carriers) you can buy a voice-only SIM and activate it online before inserting it into your compatible smartphone.
* Availability varies by location and depends on applicable liability law *cough*Störerhaftung*cough*.
How do you recommend that people "Get a real internet connection" that is useful while, say, riding public transit to and from work?
it's impossible for the average person to gauge data usage.
In a comment to a post on the BlockAdblock blog, I suggested how to fix this at the level of the user agent. A browser can establish a 1 MB quota for each page view, pause the page's connection once the quota runs out, and give the user "Add 1 MB" and "Add 10 MB" buttons to resume downloading.
But we have that here in the US too. 45Mbps in the garage 75mbps if I go stand on top of the propane tank.
That's pretty quick. What do you consider lightning fast?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Yeah, that is quick, Interesting. I've often found responsiveness slower in US, e.g. bringing up a google map.
Just went to fast.com on my phone, pulled 86Mbps at my desk (saw it spike to 94).
I don't have any propane tanks to climb on I'm afraid.
Wonder if it's a case of responsiveness rather than throughput? 45Mbs is perfectly fine. Probably depends on how densely populated the area you're in is as well. I'm in Auckland, but not the CBD.
I'll be back in the states in a couple of weeks (Virginia then Oklahoma), I'll have to compare speeds when I'm back on my new phone if I remember...
Sallisaw oklahoma home of the states first munifiber network. It doesn't go over 50MBps synchronous but hey it was the first.
It doesn't reach out of the city limits though.
ime cellular speeds are better out of town.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Verizon does not need my money either so fuck 'em. (Still remember how they locked down their flip phones back in the day)
You can be a luditte, but it's nice to watch some movies/tv/Youtube/whatever on my phone's screen once in a while. I even have my phone rooted, have Dosbox setup on it, and I actualy *program*/code on it (I write old school Dos programs as well as Linux scripts as a hobby)! Yeah, it took a while to get use to the awkward onscreen keyboard and touch mouse arrangement but it's actualy doable! On top of that, I back my written programs up online too! Holy shit in a shoebox, yes, some of use are using our smartphones as PORTABLE COMPUTERS instead of wasting time playing Candy Crush or Pokemon Go on them! You may pick your jaw up off the floor now.
Take it easy on him. He is just saying those things to look "cool", I'm sure
Hey there Mr. CFO. Time for some lessons in business. First of all, customers don't like to be told what they need and don't need. If demand exists, you provide. Or you lose customers to those who are willing to listen to demand.
The more critical lesson here is humans don't like limits. Perhaps this would be more obvious to you if your Board of Directors suddenly announced salary and bonus caps for all executives at half your current rate. You know, because one "doesn't need" to be paid more than they can consume in a year.
If Verizon customers don't speak with their wallets now on this, rest assured this will be standard practice for every major carrier within 6 months. Don't assume it won't. They're easily labeled an oligopoly for valid reasons.
Having as much data as you want changes usage patterns. I stream music and movies on my PC, and never would dream of it on my phone with Verizon. The *second* another carrier has the same coverage - Verizon is going to bleed customers who decide "actually I do want to use my phone to stream media". Since Verizon markets streaming media apps - they are feeding the very hunger that will take away customers who want to see those promises delivered on.
$15 per GB over...
Let me keep what I don't use then. If I used 2gb of my 4gb, let me rollover the 2 remaining to the next month and so on and so forth. If in 3 years I have 50GB free so be it, I paid for it.
That's why I prefer unlimited data. It's not because I plan on consuming unlimited amounts of it, but I do want to be able to go to work, plug in the headphones, and not have to think about my data plan when I decide if I want to stream music or listen to music I already bought.
Companies can make up what I "need", but the bottom line is that if your competitor offers a service that makes me happier, as in same quality and I never have to think about billing again, then I'm not your customer anymore.
then there's only profit to be made if they are buying it anyway...
I was once a Verizon customer, many years ago. (Actually, I started off with AmeriTech who they took over.) Back then, it was all about your analog cellular minutes per month in your plan. Even then, Verizon became unworkable for me because as I used my phone heavily for business and personal use, I kept racking up more minutes of usage in a month than my plan had. Overages were billed at something outrageous like 25 cents per minute.
I called Verizon's customer service at one point, saying basically; "Hey... look. I'd like to keep your service, but you've got to sell me a package with enough minutes so I don't keep getting these overages. Can I buy a bigger plan?" Their response was no ... they didn't sell plans larger than the one I had, and didn't feel most customers needed such a thing.
These days, everything's about the data .. not the voice minutes. But same thing seems to apply. They want to dictate what their customers need/want.
In reality? Yes, I get that LTE cellular technology isn't really capable of the traffic loads carriers would get if they just gave everyone unlimited free data usage on their devices. But that's a shortfall of the technology then. That's not the customer's fault, who know what he or she wants and is willing to pay for.
So what do I propose? I think at the very least, all of the carriers should be doing everything in their power to open up the use of wi-fi access points to their subscribers. This is one area where Comcast actually has things right. I can go all over the U.S. and as long as I'm a current Comcast broadband customer, I can log in to any wi-fi hotspot identifying itself as XFinity. It constantly impresses me how often that gets me an Internet connection when I'm out and about someplace, while others don't have a usable wi-fi.
And is anyone surprised that a company infamous for not listening to its customers is convinced it knows better for you than you could ever know yourself?
My personal experience with Verizon is that they can't keep their billing straight for three months running. Verizon was the local carrier for landlines when I lived in the Pacific Northwest. I couldn't go three months without bogus phone charges showing up on my home phone and having to spend hours trying to get someone to admit that the charges were not valid and would be removed in a month or two. Yeah, credit flags for non payment for not paying for bogus charges then the impossibility of getting flags removed from a credit report. Three hours calls to Pakistan didn't happen on my home phone at 2 am when I was sleeping. But, try to get Verizon to admit they made a mistake. "A visitor could have made those calls." Nope, didn't happen.
NRRPT/RCT
There's really no mystery to this: Verizon is sticking to that unconvincing party line, because they're between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The restrictions they agreed to when they purchased their Block C spectrum license state that they're not permitted to restrict the ways in which you use your data connection on their wireless network; if you want to tether your BitTorrent PC to your Verizon Wireless cell phone and let it saturate that connection 24/7, they can't stop you -- they quite literally can't even slow you down. Thus, in order to make that kind of abuse of their network exorbitantly expensive, the only option that seems to be left to them is metering. We could probably argue ceaselessly about whether or not their current metered plans and overage fees are actually reasonable based on typical user activity -- but that's another discussion entirely. The point is, Verizon is never going to back down from those meters. Because they can't.
Mind you, I'm not making apologies for them... they made their bed, (by buying that spectrum in the first place) and now they have to sleep in it. But I don't have to sleep in it with them.
If you don't need unlimited data (hint: It's true. You may need a lot of data, but with a limited bandwidth you cannot even use unlimited data), they don't need to limit it, as you won't use it anyway.
Sure, you can see what you've used, but you have no idea what you will use.
If you had 100MB of data, how would you know how much of that it'll take to go to a random web page? How do you know that random web page won't just start feeding you the text to all the literary works ever created, over and over again?
How about one day the administrators of a website you frequent decide to put large streaming videos on their page one day. Now you just used up a bunch of your monthly allowance.
It's impossible for users to know how much data they will use.
In other words, if everyone refrains from doing something you personally disapprove of, costs will go down.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I pay for a real Internet connection (40 Mb/s currently; if that proves insufficient I'll upgrade). It's pretty reliable, but the DSL I had before that wasn't, and there might be a couple of days without home ISP service. Being able to tether during those days was very convenient.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And this is why I'm ditching Verizon as soon as my plan expires next month. Hello, T-Mobile!