As I had posted previously, Verizon had announced they would be killing unlimited data plans for smart phones and devices, and switch to a "shared" data plan model. You can find my video about using WiFI to help save on data plan costs in an earlier Tech Thursday. Well, the axe is falling, and "bucket" data plans will end up costing Verizon customers more, of which I am one. 

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Under the new plan, which kicks in on June 28th, a new smartphone user who wants the cheapest of the "buckets", 1 gigabyte, is going to be paying $90 before taxes and fees. That is $40 for access for the phone and $50 for 1 Gigabyte. Customers can also add a basic phone, laptop or tablet for $30, $20 and $10 respectively. Data buckets come in a 1GB size for $50 up to $100 for a whopping 10 GB. If you get a mobile hotspot service that turns your phone into a WiFi hot spot router, that service is free. Wow, for a second there I thought they were going to "really" gouge customers on the prices. Looks like it's only going to "slightly" gouge them.

If you're unlimited data, when you upgrade, you're out of luck. You will lose your unlimited data and you'll be made to change over to one of the available options. The only way around keeping your unlimited data plan is you have to buy your phone outright at the time of upgrade. And new smartphones can start at $400 without a subsidy from a carrier.

So to be clear, if you're on a tired plan like me, mine is $30 for 2 GB of data a month, and 700 shared minutes, and 1000 text messages, you're fine. You don't need to upgrade or change your plan. Just new customers are required to choose from the new plan. But Verizon has changed the minutes and text to unlimited in these new plans. But last I knew, more people were using the data. So it seems like a hollow gesture to me.

Also, if you're thinking you'll take your business to AT&T, they have stated they will be doing something similar as well. T-mobile has said nothing will be changing on their service, and nothing has been heard from Sprint in regards to if they are planning on making changes.

Smartphone users are hungry for data, and yes, it's a supply demand thing. So it's natural that prices would go up. But smartphones, like the iPhone in particular, have brought in a lot more customers to these carriers. So they are making money, but bandwidth is at a premium now and adding more space for these data hungry users can get expensive, so I can see the carrier's side of it. But somehow, I still feel like I'm getting the short end of the stick. Link may be NSFW.

$>cp -rf /usr/wallet/$ /bin/verizon

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