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Shamed In Super Bowl Ads, Verizon Introduces Unlimited Data Plans (theverge.com)
A surprise announcement Sunday revealed that tomorrow Verizon will begin offering introductory plans with unlimited data.*
* Customers "will get full LTE speeds until they reach 22GB of usage," reports The Verge, "after which they'll be subject to reduced data speeds and de-prioritization."
An anonymous reader writes: Other carriers have similar limits. "For Sprint it's 23GB. T-Mobile has a slightly higher threshold of 26GB... AT&T matches Verizon at 22GB," reports The Verge. Verizon says their cap is "to ensure a quality experience for all customers... While we don't expect to do that very often, network management is a crucial tool that benefits all Verizon customers." The $80-a-month plan also includes hotspot tethering -- up to 10 gigabytes -- and "includes 'HD' video as opposed to the 480p/DVD-quality video that T-Mobile One customers get by default."
In a Sunday YouTube video, the head of Verizon's wireless effort says customer interviews found "Some of the heavier users of data -- the power users -- had data anxiety." But it's still a surprising move. Engadget reports that in the past Verizon "frequently tried its hardest to discourage unlimited data users," but today is "facing stiff competition from T-Mobile, which engineered a dramatic comeback in recent years and upped the ante by making unlimited data standard through the One plan."
Verizon's pricing was also targeted heavily last week in a barrage of Super Bowl ads by both Sprint and T-Mobile just last Sunday. T-Mobile showed a masochistic woman calling Verizon just to enjoying hearing about the overages, taxes and fees she incurred by exceeding her data limit, while Sprint showed a man who was trying to escape his Verizon contract by faking his own death.
* Customers "will get full LTE speeds until they reach 22GB of usage," reports The Verge, "after which they'll be subject to reduced data speeds and de-prioritization."
An anonymous reader writes: Other carriers have similar limits. "For Sprint it's 23GB. T-Mobile has a slightly higher threshold of 26GB... AT&T matches Verizon at 22GB," reports The Verge. Verizon says their cap is "to ensure a quality experience for all customers... While we don't expect to do that very often, network management is a crucial tool that benefits all Verizon customers." The $80-a-month plan also includes hotspot tethering -- up to 10 gigabytes -- and "includes 'HD' video as opposed to the 480p/DVD-quality video that T-Mobile One customers get by default."
In a Sunday YouTube video, the head of Verizon's wireless effort says customer interviews found "Some of the heavier users of data -- the power users -- had data anxiety." But it's still a surprising move. Engadget reports that in the past Verizon "frequently tried its hardest to discourage unlimited data users," but today is "facing stiff competition from T-Mobile, which engineered a dramatic comeback in recent years and upped the ante by making unlimited data standard through the One plan."
Verizon's pricing was also targeted heavily last week in a barrage of Super Bowl ads by both Sprint and T-Mobile just last Sunday. T-Mobile showed a masochistic woman calling Verizon just to enjoying hearing about the overages, taxes and fees she incurred by exceeding her data limit, while Sprint showed a man who was trying to escape his Verizon contract by faking his own death.
Yup, because without those subsidies and reugulations, coverage in areas with lower populations (much less landlines) would CERTAINLY be better and cheaper, because market forces.
TLDR: Shitfuck, Nebraska has services of most any kind because of government, not the free market.
Carriers just don't get it (or they do get it and won't admit it). All we want is for them to be a dumb pipe. Connect us to the network and then GET OUT OF THE WAY.
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The free market keeps Verizon competitive when upstarts that do not cover quite as unprofitable rural area begin to cut into their bottom line.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
You see, the free market fixes that too. Not having cell phone service would be a possible minus for people deciding to move out into the middle of nowhere; they might instead decide, "I want to live in civilization. Maybe I should pay slightly more to get a home somewhere a little more urban." Regulating cell phone companies to serve places with low population density is like telling restaurants, "If you're going to have a location in the city, we're going to require you to also build a location in every rural area within 50 miles." What do you think would happen? Your choice of restaurants would become very limited. Some would say "oligopolistic." That's what has happened to cell service. The government has created artificial barriers to entry and everyone (except those who are in rural areas and companies that can afford to comply) loses.
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
It's unlimited, but once you hit the threshold of 22GB, they throttle your speeds.
Then it is not unlimited. The FTC really should ban these companies from using such blatantly misleading terms.
The concept of a Free Market is a great teaching tool, but much like its counterpart, the infinite frictionless plain, it doesn't actually exist in reality in its theoretical form. That's because there is no free market where everyone involved has 100% access to all relevant information, and 100% freedom of action to buy or not, nevermind a complete absence of any consequence for behavior.
What is true, though, is that competition is a powerful force, and as long as that is kept reasonable/fair and free of anti-competitive forces, it can be harnessed to produce very positive results. Competition provides impetus for improvement and efficiency, where a noncompetitive market does not (and tends to lead to stagnation, arbitrary price increases, poor quality, and such).
Why this is important is that you need laws and regulations to make sure that the market is free and fair. Regulations can do things like make sure that weights and measurements are right (so you're not being cheated) or that companies aren't doing underhanded things to try and force competitors out of business or otherwise conspiring to scam the consumer (price fixing, cartelization, etc). That doesn't mean that every regulation is good, especially if they're being written by the competitors (regulatory capture), but they're not inherently evil either.
The data is unlimited, not the speed. No FTC required here.
Nope sorry bullshit. If you had an actual free market (instead of the crony capitalism that passes for it in the USSA) then the people in those areas could form a co-op and pay for their area to have fiber and towers...but they will be crushed by lobbyists for the scumbag telecos that won't run out there but don't want any competition, no matter how small.
As long as you have corps big enough to buy their own laws you will have corruption and unfettered capitalism has been tried here before, it was called the age of the robber barons and ended up with corps having their own private armies and beating (and even killing) those that tried to unionize and blowing up rivals businesses...yeah lets go back to that, how about NO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now, if you want to build a log cabin on the top of a mountain, fine, maybe you're fine with no connection to the modern world. But a number of people live out in the "middle of nowhere" because their work requires a lot of open space in the "middle of nowhere". You know... like farming. Those are the 1% that feed the rest of the 99%. I think we can reach some reasonable compromise that ensures reasonable free market competition while still ensuring our farmers and ranchers, and those that support them, have access to technology and services everyone else takes for granted without being bankrupted in the process.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I think most people understand that unlimited means within reason. Unlimited coffee refills doesn't mean it's served from a firehose. And even if they did you'd complain that it was being served from a 1.5" hose instead of 2", because 1.5" is still limited!
Two years ago AT&T tried to buy out T-mobile for way more than the market value of the company. Why? To get rid of the competition of course! Who stopped them? THE GOVERNMENT.
Thanks to government we have competition!