This appears to affect smartphone plans only. Is this right? The OP's linked article indicates this, and talks about the current, $30/mo unlimited plan. Aircard plans are $60.
greenrvgreen wrote: This appears to affect smartphone plans only. Is this right? The OP's linked article indicates this, and talks about the current, $30/mo unlimited plan. Aircard plans are $60.
True, .. to a point.
My "unlimited" aircard plan is $34.00 mo (commercial & no longer available). The aircard plan is a data plan, granted it's 3G, but still a data plan.
No they never promised you a 4G plan, but it appears they are going to force you into it. Am I reading this wrong? Quote The way it will likely work is that as 3G unlimited contracts expire, Verizon will push subscribers to upgrade their devices to smartphones on company's 4G LTE network. These customers will then have to sign up for the data share plans. It sure sounds like they aren't going to let you keep the 3G.
Those of us who are grandfathered with our 3G air cards, haven't had a contract for years. I know that Verizon would like for us to switch to 4G and their data share plan, but I didn't see in the announcement that they would force us.
As posted earlier, the actual statement was,
As these 3G unlimited data plan customers migrate to 4G LTE, they will have to purchase the company's data-share plan (which Verizon plans to launch in mid-summer) and move off the $30 per month unlimited data plan.
They may try to force all of the grandfathered accounts to new data plans and that is when I will get upset. BTW, the grandfathered accounts resulted from a consent agreement Verizon made, after the Attorney General of New York brought action against Verizon over the usage of "unlimited" in their advertising and Verizon's interpretation that it didn't really mean "unlimited."
Tom
* This post was
edited 05/16/12 03:08pm by pulsar *
Tom, .. this is the quote that started my line of thinking (top of the PCMag page)
"At an investor conference, an exec says the carrier is killing the plan for "grandfathered" customers and will force existing and new customers to sign up for a tiered "data share" plan on its 4G LTE network."
The way it's worded it led me to believe as an existing customer I would be forced into a 4G plan. It seemed fairly definitive to me, but the rest of the article also seems to add conflicting verbiage.
I am on 4g and unlimited and I pay extra for the hotspot data share feature
I'm not liking where this is headed
If they moved me to a tiered plan I will drop the hotspot data feature and go back to using PDAnet as the new tiered plan will most certainly cost me as much as my combined $60 data charges. ($30 unlimited data $30 for wifi data share)
Options, always have options, and the journey goes much smoother ....
Connected thru Verizon with HotSopt WiFi using a Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Member of the Verizon Wireless Customer Council
I BOUGHTthis phone
I'm pretty sure that Verizon, like AT&T, intended the unlimited data plans to be used with aircards on ONE computer. With the advent of aircard routers, PDAnet, etc., folks started to share or TETHER their aircards to other computers. This caused an unintended increase in data use. To counter this trend they came up with a seperate 5G Tether plan. I had to give up my grandfathered unlimited for the new tether plan.....IF I wanted to continue to tether. Anything over 5G is billed at $10.00 per gig. Fairly reasonable. P.S. They claim they can detect tethering and I kind of believe them.
Lynn & Diana Wagoner
Three Boston Terriers
2005 Chevy 2500HD D/A
2006 HHII 29.5LKTG
Retired
lynndiwagon wrote: I'm pretty sure that Verizon, like AT&T, intended the unlimited data plans to be used with aircards on ONE computer. With the advent of aircard routers, PDAnet, etc., folks started to share or TETHER their aircards to other computers. This caused an unintended increase in data use. To counter this trend they came up with a seperate 5G Tether plan. I had to give up my grandfathered unlimited for the new tether plan.....IF I wanted to continue to tether. Anything over 5G is billed at $10.00 per gig. Fairly reasonable. P.S. They claim they can detect tethering and I kind of believe them.
You pretty much sum it up, .. one thing to remember though is they offered 3G Mi-Fi's long before 4G, so they were well aware of the bandwidth issues when they did. For now the AirCard and Mi-Fi accounts can be billed and accounted for separately (like another cell phone/number), ... but, add Hotspot and Tethering to the mix and it becomes a game changer.
For now I have Aircard 3G, Hotspot 4G, and Smartphone (unlimited) data plans, ... I have no idea how long I can keep this up before my banker starts looking for me. After reading the latest changes, it appears it won't be my call, they'll chose for me.
It's just a matter of time before the plans offered will be out of my price range. Somewhere along the line I need to buy groceries too.
AFAICT, while aircard use has grown, its growth in North America (as compared to Europe or Asia) is nowhere near what the pundits had predicted or the Cellcos had hoped.
OTOH, smartphone adoption is EXPLODING in North America, and the Cellcos are responding by raising their prices (supply/demand). Don't like it? Buy a stamp and send a letter instead--or use your landline.
Neither one is even relevant in the 21st century, of course, but that doesn't help one stomach these wanton price hikes. Looking for perspective? Search this forum for discussions about how evil "LightSquared" was to try and compete in the cellphone market, potentially lowering prices.
Not enough? Ask any of the dozens upon dozens of HAM radio operators nationwide, who hog airway bandwidth that could otherwise be repurposed to millions of smarthphone users.
Offline
.gif)
