Remember last month Verizon was found out have been throttling videos streaming on Netflix? According to the carrier at that time, they were simply conducting a “test”, but it seems that this test was a prelude to something else, which is a bunch of new unlimited data plans that unfortunately will throttle your video streams.
Verizon has recently announced that their previous unlimited data plan is now being split into three different options: Go Unlimited which is priced starting at $75; Beyond Unlimited which starts at $85 for the first line, and Business Unlimited. Naturally all three plans will differ from each other in terms of features offered, but one common thread that they have is that your video streams will be throttled in terms of quality.
For example Go Unlimited will cap your video streaming resolution at 480p on smartphones and 720p on tablets, while Beyond Unlimited will improve that slightly with 720p on smartphones and 1080p on tablets. Using your phone to tether to a laptop will also see video quality capped. According to Verizon, they claim that users won’t be able to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p streams, whether or not that is true depends on the user, but at the same time we’re sure that customers would at least like to be able to choose for themselves.
We suppose the alternative would be seek another carrier or choose a capped data plan in which these restrictions aren’t imposed. As for customers who are on the previous plans, the bad news is that eventually your videos will be throttled to the same quality as Beyond Unlimited plans. Everything else will remain the same as what you’re paying for now save for video quality.
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