Potential Cell Phone Data Plan Changes

There have been rumors about cell phone tiered data plan changes with Verizon since around Christmas time, when their 4G LTE network started to roll out. Surprisingly at the time, there were no major changes.

For smartphones, Verizon has quietly gotten rid of the $15/150MB plans for new customers over the last few months and requires the $30/unlimited choice currently. That hasn't affected us, since we already had the $30/unlimited option. We found that we use on average around 700MB each per month. I just checked and in April I used over 1GB. That is strictly 3G data, it does not include data that you use over a WiFi connection. Granted we don't always switch over to WiFi when we're home, since it's unlimited data, but when downloading updates or anything that pushes heavy data, we usually do switch to WiFi since it's much faster.

The rumors out there right now, which are changing daily, point to a minimum $30 data charge for smartphones and it would be limited to 2GB. The unlimited option would no longer be offered. There would then be a 5GB plan for $50 and an 8GB plan for $80. There would be no difference in charges for the faster 4G phones/data vs 3G. So the main difference for most is that you'd currently go from unlimited (in theory) to a limit of 2GB, which for most wouldn't be a big deal.

It appears right now that anyone currently on the unlimited $30 plan would be able to keep that plan and as of right now, folks are saying that even holds true when updating your phone in the future. If you change your actual plan I bet that will be a different story, but not 100% sure. That would be good if you can keep the unlimited $30 plan indefinitely. So will see how things begin to unfold.

Since T-Mobile is being swallowed up into ATT and we're getting less competition as a result, we'll probably see these same changes across both carriers with a few month lag in between. As always, should be interesting to see how things unfold.

Here is a link to the full details on Engadget.

How much data do you use? Would this affect you or cause you to want to change carriers?  I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Posted in: verizon data plan rates