Verizon thinks tiered data is a great idea.

[nerdydesi]

Verizon's Shammo expects tiered data pricing to deliver future ARPU gains - FierceWireless

Reading that article makes my blood boil slightly. They keep touting the amazing things you can do with a smartphone such as Netflix, offering current LG Revolution buyers 3 months of free NetFlix. They know its data-intensive and want you to go over your caps and pay for overages or better yet, upgrade from the 2gb/$30 to the $50 and $80 plans. They claim all the wonderful things you can do and then saddle you with a 2gb measly minimum cap.

What Verizon and the other cell phone companies are doing is brilliantly evil. They want to get us hooked on mobile data, then swiftly take away unlimited plans and force us on tiered pricing and high overages to get them more money than they know what they can do with.

I will clutch onto my grandfathered unlimited plan for dear life. But it sounds like the way things are going, I'll have to go back to a feature-phone within a few years. I'm certainly hooked with my Droid Charge, watching YouTube all the time and such. I don't want to worry about going over my limit and then paying good old greedy Verizon more than they deserve.

To me, it feels a lot like getting customers hooked onto a drug and controlling them with that addiction. You see more more and more people are getting smartphones at a rapid pace and these wireless companies will bleed them dry. I know if I was a big fat VZW executive, I'd be rubbing my hands with glee right now.

 

[Ricky Babalu]

They will push the envelope as much as the market will bear. Expect more revenue generating "bright ideas".

 

[Linkchomp]

oh yes, because wifi surely isn't an option. Blame data hogs for tethering and using so much data like a home connection.

 

[FrankXS]

AFAIC, I do have to give Kudos to VZW for at least keeping the data overage charges half way reasonable. The overage charges are $10/GB. I mean, you can go over your alloted amount by 2 or 3 GB and still only have $20/$30 on your bill. Not much more than if you had originally purchased a larger plan. At least it is obvious that they are not trying to play "gouging games" on the overage fees.

Add to this the fact that they have already built into their web interface the ability to get "warning" and or "overage" alerts to your phone at your own personally configured alert percentages, I think they are trying to help people avoid overages.

There should not be any more $1,000,000 overage bills resulting from this plan, unlike some of the earlier ($15/Mb) plans.

That's something.

-Frank

 

[nerdydesi]

oh yes, because wifi surely isn't an option. Blame data hogs for tethering and using so much data like a home connection.

Its funny how Verizon will just say "herp derp, use wifi", when they keep expanding their 4G network and touting how its the second coming. What's the matter, their precious network can't take the strain and we have to offload the bandwidth with wifi, which feeds off home internet and is being capped by the providers as well (albeit far higher than mobile data caps)?

I'm sure that even without some data hogs, the carriers would still have killed off unlimited data. That is just a lame excuse. Its all about getting more and more and more profit.

The thing that TICKS me off is they put these restrictive caps but then keep touting how you can do amazing things like watch NetFlix on the go. Ok, I'll watch a couple of movies, I go over my cap for the entire month. Great, now I can stay stuck glued to a STATIONARY wi-fi hotspot like at Starbucks to keep utilizing the potential of my amazing MOBILE smartphone. Sheesh, that's pathetic!

These caps are greed-based, not network-strained-based, especially for Verizon. They used to ask $29.99, and now they want to get us addicted and hooked and subscribe to their $80/10gb and beyond!

 

[kwjones]

sad part is contract user is tiered while prepaid get unlimited. I don't understand that logic.