Say five years ago, buying a smartphone from a carrier would see customers picking a plan, pay a subsidized fee on the phone, and sign onto the carrier’s network for the next two years, with the plan usually being priced higher in order to make up for the cost of the phone. However T-Mobile turned the industry on its head when they announced they would be doing away with subsidies.
Several carriers followed in T-Mobile’s footsteps after and now it looks like Verizon has decided to follow suit. The company has announced what can only be described as a simplification of its services and offers to customers. The carrier has effectively killed off service contracts and subsidies. Instead customers will pay for the phone in its entirely via monthly installments, but the upside is that service plans are now cheaper.
The carrier has also done away with single-line or family options, instead customers choose from four different sets of plans with varying amounts of data, so depending on your needs, you can pick a plan that costs you as low as $30 a month, or $80 if you’re a heavy user. Best of all since there are no contracts, customers are allowed to swap from plan to plan as they see fit, so if you think that 1GB a month is too low and jump to 12GB the next month, that’s fine.
If you decide then that 12GB is too much, you can then swap to 6GB the following month without any issues. While this new set of plans might seem simple enough to understand for new customers, there is concern that Verizon’s existing customers might have issue with them, such as those on the $20 a month plan with 500MB of data, or those on family plans who will now could see an increase of $5 in their device fee.
How will this new plan be received by customers? We suppose it’s too early to tell so we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out. In the meantime any Verizon or would-be Verizon customers out there happy by this simplification?
Filed in . Read more about Verizon.