Most people say that among the Big Four carriers in the US, Verizon has the best “unlimited plan”, offering value for money as compared to the other three. But it looks like the new tiers that they are introducing to subscribers aren’t as great as they were before, making users pay the same or slightly lower amount, but curtailing their data, mobile hotspot, or video streaming experience. This may actually lose them some of the goodwill that they received due to the better than average unlimited plan.
Originally, the unlimited plan only had one kind and that’s the $80 a month plan, which leads to $140 for two lines, and $200 for five lines. You also got “unlimited data” but is throttled when you reach 22GB, 10GB of 4G LTE mobile hotspot, and unrestricted HD Video streaming. Starting August 23, they will now have 3 different kinds of plans: Go Unlimited, Beyond Unlimited, and a business plan, the latter of which is obviously for businesses and not for ordinary consumers.
The basic cost of the Go Unlimited is less than the previous one as you will now just pay $75 for one line, $130 for two lines, and still $200 for five lines. However, you will be throttled when Verizon’s network is congested, regardless if you’re taking up a lot of bandwidth or not. You will also have just 600kbps of mobile hotspot and video streaming will only be up to 480p. Beyond Limited will cost you $85, 22GB before you start to get throttled, 15GB of 4G LTE hotspots, and video streams limited to 720p if on your phone and 1080p if you’re on your tablet.
The new tiers will start tomorrow, but those already on the unlimited plan will get to keep their original plan, except for the unrestricted video streaming. The new rules for what quality you can stream will take effect even for the grandfathered plans. This is not going to make all people happy of course so we just wait for the backlash.
VIA: SlashGear
Verizon is stupid.