New Unlimited Plans "myPlan" Coming

[frail]

Unlimited Welcome - $65 (no UWB)
Unlimited Plus - $80 (possible deprioritization after 500GB)

Bundled perks will be split off and will come at additional cost.

Prices are with auto pay discount and do not include taxes and fees.

Details in the videos below:





UPDATE:

It's official:

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/myplan

[techguru30]

Unlimited Welcome - $65 (no UWB)
Unlimited Plus - $80 (deprioritization after 500GB)

Bundled perks will be split off and will come at
additional cost.
Prices are with auto pay discount and do not include taxes and fees.

Details in the video below:

These plans are worse than the current ones. I guess VZW has not lost enough customers yet on the consumer postpaid side.

Sent from my Pixel 6a using HoFo mobile app

[DRC72]

These plans are worse than the current ones. I guess VZW has not lost enough customers yet on the consumer postpaid side.

Sent from my Pixel 6a using HoFo mobile app

Yeah, these plans look to be like a really big disappointment. My premium unlimited plan from AT&T for $75 is a much better deal considering my data and never gets deprioritized ever. Plus I get 20 more gigabytes of data totaling 50 GB for hotspot. Time for Hans to go.

[VVivian]

It’s like Verizon WANTS to lose.

The only way I can imagine savvy customers accepting this is if Verizon had ubiquitous 5G UW midband, as well as mmWave everywhere in outdoor urban and outdoor upper suburban areas — clear-cut network superiority. But they don’t. AT&T and T-Mobile are great in many places, and only getting better.

[daisydoo]

These are awful. Verizon will probably keep losing customers.

I get the best coverage from at&t, a close second with tmobile. Verizon last due to how coverage got worse for me.

Data speeds tmobile is fastest for me, att second, Verizon last.

Customer service att has been best, tmobile second best (tforce has slipped), Verizon last.

I have zero reason to use Verizon and these plans reinforce that

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[techguru30]

What was the point of Verizon Wireless creating all this capacity with mmWave and C Band if they are just going to let a majority of their customers leave due to their uncompetitive plans?

[DRC72]

I know 500 GB is a lot of data, but come on AT&T and T-Mobile don’t even deprioritize you at all on their top tier plans. If you’re going to go with the unlimited welcome, then you might as well go with AT&T’s $50 unlimited value plus plan, which gives you complete access to their C band And DoD spectrum.

[Orlimar1]

I know 500 GB is a lot of data, but come on AT&T and T-Mobile don’t even deprioritize you at all under their top tier plans. If you’re going to go with the unlimited welcome, then you might as well go with AT&T’s $50 unlimited value plus plan, which gives you complete access to their C band And DoD spectrum.

Great point about the T-Mobile and ATT plans. I think Verizon is really going to shoot themselves in the foot with these plans.

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[Haas_Dave]

These plans are not going to bring in new customers.

If I wanted something without included benefits, I would just go to Visible or Tracfone-operated plans. At least those have similar data priority now as many of the postpaid plans.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[ecs0013]

It’s like Verizon WANTS to lose.

The only way I can imagine savvy customers accepting this is if Verizon had ubiquitous 5G UW midband, as well as mmWave everywhere in outdoor urban and outdoor upper suburban areas — clear-cut network superiority. But they don’t. AT&T and T-Mobile are great in many places, and only getting better.

I agree—the new plans are terrible both by Verizon standards and what everyone else is doing in the postpaid world. The fact that Verizon is still holding back network tech on plans is both stupid and arrogant (and leads to congestion so everyone loses) and the "coverage" argument is long gone in many places (seems like AT&T is on-par and T-Mobile has made strides). I think it's also concerning that even for a geek like me who is interested in this stuff, I have no need/desire to add some sort of Verizon plan to the mix—doesn't seem to bring much to the table.

That's not to say I want Verizon to lose...I own some $VZ and have been riding out the dip over the last year and keep hoping they'll learn from their mistakes, but my hope is waning. Hans needs to go.

[chris4434]

These plans are an absolute joke and will make sure Verizon continues to lose customers even faster than they already have been. There’s absolutely no reason to go with Verizon now. They’re the most expensive, worst customer service, worst data network and their overall coverage has been surpassed by AT&T. If you want the best data speeds you choose T-Mobile, best overall coverage AT&T and if you’re value conscious you’d go with a MVNO. Verizon has absolutely ZERO competitive advantage at all now. They’re still trying to rely on their former reputation of having the “best network” but they haven’t had the best network in years now and people are tired of paying the highest prices for a subpar product.

[ecs0013]

I think the other part that isn't sitting well with me are the add-on features. While a handful of people didn't necessarily like or use the bundled perks before, having them as add-ons (with plans not getting cheaper) with Verizon acting as an intermediary feels very mid-2000s. I'm guessing they get things like the Disney bundle at a discount, add it to your bill for $10, and still advertise that you're saving money, while making a few bucks themselves. It's not bad on its face, but once again is an instance of a carrier trying to be something other than a dumb pipe.

If I'm running AT&T, this feels like a great opportunity to do almost nothing with your offerings and just advertise/offer promotions and steal customers away from T-Mobile and Verizon, undoing some of the stupidity of the last decade.

[blkballoon925]

These plans are not going to bring in new customers.

If I wanted something without included benefits, I would just go to Visible or Tracfone-operated plans. At least those have similar data priority now as many of the postpaid plans.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

This is the part the stood out to me. Verizon just nuked its one differentiator.

They aren't price-competitive with AT&T and T-Mobile. They don't offer a unique value proposition like AT&T's Unlimited Premium having QCI7 priority. They don't even throw in a cheap value-add like "Call Filter Plus" on the higher-end plan, which would match AT&T including CNAM dips with Unlimited Premium. They essentially just raised the price by cutting out value and discount potential while keeping the price effectively the same.

The one thing Play More and Get More had going for them, in the eyes of most consumers, was that you could spend a little more with Verizon over AT&T or an MVNO and get a ton of value out of "freebees" like Apple Music, Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Apple Arcade. Individually, they're not worth that much. But combined, it does make up for the difference in price over a bare bones MVNO like US Mobile or Spectrum/Xfinity Mobile. The 50GB "premium data" threshold on LTE/5GNW was probably a good "sweet spot" for the average consumer's usage, too. Especially if you live in an area with plentiful UW coverage.

Do More was an interesting alternative to Play More, where you could effectively opt out of the media and entertainment bundles for a discounted price on hotspot, tablet, and watch device lines; and international roaming through the included TravelPasses. Personally, I found that plan very attractive since it brought the price of watch and tablet lines down to what I consider a more reasonable price.

I'm not sure who they're targeting with this change, other than to perhaps finally purge the last remaining holdouts on some of those legacy plans that allow unrestricted, unlimited data and/or tethering. Existing customers are all scurrying to move onto the current plans from what I've read online. Those who aren't on device payment plans can easily walk away now to a more affordable AT&T, T-Mobile, or MVNO plan as soon as they encounter an issue with their grandfathered "More" plan or Verizon requires "upgrading" to one of these new plans to get a device upgrade promotion. Nothing about this is going to help decrease churn or attract new customers.

I've already read posts online of people using several hundred gigabyte of data in one month getting notices from Verizon regarding their usage. The 500GB cap on the new "Unlimited Plus" plan doesn't seem like it does much other than make clear what the definition of "unlimited" has been for a while. It certainly won't help congestion in areas where that kind of data consumption is already occurring. At best, it'll just nudge those people to another carrier when they start hitting the 500GB cap. Maybe Verizon secretly hopes these unattractive plans will drive enough people to leave that the congestion problem will solve itself?

I'm honestly baffled by this move. Over the past two weeks, I expected them to announce that they had managed to clear all of their C-band spectrum early, or at least a significant portion of it. And consequently, lift or at least raise the video streaming bandwidth cap, and possibly introduce new plans that merge the separate LTE/5GNW and UW data meters. Despite what this would do to congestion in the short term, I assumed they'd explain it away with upgrades to the LTE/5GNW footprint. And more technically speaking, they could accomplish that by finally outfitting the tons of legacy sites lacking B2, B5, and/or B66 with their entire LTE spectrum portfolio, get mmWave on more small cells, as well as ongoing C-band and CBRS upgrades offloading traffic.

I should've known better, as they still have sites without C-band here (on towers that even AT&T has upgraded with both of their n77 radios!) even though upgrade activity seems to have ended months ago. None of the old B13-only and B13/66 small cells have been touched. The only change I've seen Verizon do since last fall is replace more Nokia mmWave gear with Samsung. I'm not sure if they're still held up by supply chain issues or feel that what they've done is "adequate." But either way, it's not enough. There are still a decent number of pockets of congestion where they need to modernize old, insufficient small cells or light up more spectrum. I still know of quite a few macros lacking B2 and B5, one of which serves a Walmart and The Home Depot, and data stalls out inside either building. They appear to have shut down the A-side B5 carrier here in February or early March, but still haven't realigned the other to make room for a 15x15 n5. In fact, since n5 was using DSS on the A-side, I don't think they have had any n5 lit up here for two months now. It's absolutely stunning how their world-class network engineering team seems to be dragging their feet on what should be relatively quick software and configuration changes to use all of their licensed spectrum at a time when congestion on their network has never been so severe and customers have been churning away every quarter for networks that have more capacity and competitive prices.

In my view, it appears to me that engineering has been forced to take a back seat to the marketing and accounting teams, who are only concerned with advertising a best-in-class network that they don't possess because of a decade of inadequate investment. And nobody in leadership seems to care that it's a recipe for disaster.

[@Class]

I didn't buy any Verizon shares this morning...

[ecs0013]

This is the part the stood out to me. Verizon just nuked its one differentiator.

[...]

Nothing about this is going to help decrease churn or attract new customers.

[...]

In my view, it appears to me that engineering has been forced to take a back seat to the marketing and accounting teams, who are only concerned with advertising a best-in-class network that they don't possess because of a decade of inadequate investment. And nobody in leadership seems to care that it's a recipe for disaster.

Well-said. While I could write about AT&T's mismanagement for days, I'll be really curious how their network will change once they can light up C-Band and DoD everywhere (it seems like they're ready and just waiting for it to clear) and they've generally been good about having all LTE bands on most sites. They've also expanded to cover so much more area as a result of the FirstNet contract (it seems they're about equal with Verizon in total coverage area). With AT&T potentially having a really great network soon and T-Mobile competing mostly on pure speed with "good enough" coverage, Verizon's recent ads still touting their network as the only competitive advantage feels very tone-deaf.

I feel like about 5 years ago, thanks to marketing, longtime Verizon customers were terrified to try any alternative because the idea that if you left a populated area, your phone wouldn't work. With AT&T covering about the same area and T-Mobile closing the gap, it seems to be less so, as well as word-of-mouth countering those assumptions.