Good news for Verizon unlimited plan holders....

[96Bounder30E]

I never did think this would get very far.......:S


Verizon Wireless caves to FCC pressure, says it won’t throttle 4G users

[Belgique]

Robocop: I did the exact same thing. Never used more than 2 gigs so no big deal eh? El Wrongo. We then went on a trip and hit places with no wifi and now I'm struggling to stay under 10 gigs and I'm not doing video or anything. You'd think that after all these decades I would be smarter. Nah.

[M_GO_BLUE1]

You can still keep your unlimited plan if you pay full price for a new phone...

[Robocop]

I just bought the bullet with VZW as I upgraded from a Droid I have had forever to the Galaxy S5. I was stomping my feet when I learned about losing the unlimited data (I had forgotten the new action they were taking and thought I was grandfathered in totally). However, I simply considered how I had probably wasted unlimited data over the years and was willing to try a new methodology. So, in order to get some additional discounting on the new phone and data plan I picked up a tablet with an additional line as well as always using wi-fi when I can, more so at the house. Sadly, we have done all this to ourselves in the search for more efficient communication. It comes with a cost. Having a pager seems so prehistoric by today's standards!

[wintersun]

We have been paying $180 per month for 40GB of data and that was with the mediocre 4G performance from our local tower. Moving this month to a $400 a month T-1 service plan with AT&T.

Hard thing for me to understand is that AT&T says it cannot provide DSL to my house and yet T-1 as being installed is actually a double loop DSL service with 2x the speed. Wonder if it could be the greater profit from forcing customers into 4G or T-1? Aren't monopolies great - yeah capitalism.

[MrWizard]

A few years ago
Verizon was including a Netflix app on phones before that there was a TV app
It's all marketing... Create the market then raise the costs

[wa8yxm]

Verizon has a history of doing what they should not do and the FCC has a history of slapping them around a bit.

Last time it was double dipping on data, once for delivering it to your phoen and again if you tethered the phone.

Now I see it is throttling

Considering their cuss-some-more service department has, in the past, set the standard for poor service (This goes back to even before they were Verizon) Well....... Now you know why I do not carry their phone.

[lryrob9301]

Bill.Satellite wrote:
Doesn't that just mean they will cancel the unlimited plans as time moves forward instead?

No, they have already tried that and the federal courts have ruled against them as well as the FCC. The throttling didn't start till after Verizon lost in court. It was a coercion tactic to get unlimited plan users to switch to a metered more expensive plan.

[paulcardoza]

One more note of interest........ My company has service through AT&T. We have UNLIMITED WORLDWIDE DATA as a feature for $54/mo on our phones. However, if 5gb is exceeded, we are throttled, but not cut off.

[paulcardoza]

Well, they will do everything possible to try and pry people away from those plans. I believe there are no current options for upgrading handsets with discounts unless you surrender the unlimited plan for one of the newer offerings. Same with AT&T by the way.

They keep saying that only a very small percentage of users exceed 5gb per month, so I'm not sure what the problem really is. I suppose the goal is simply to try and mimimize the amount of video streaming that users are doing over cellular, which really chews up bandwidth.

Bill.Satellite wrote:
Doesn't that just mean they will cancel the unlimited plans as time moves forward instead?

[Wrace]

Well! No soup for me.

Since 2011, Verizon has throttled 3G users who have unlimited data plans when they connect to congested cell sites if they fall within the top five percent of data users. That's 4.7GB or more per month.

Verizon will presumably continue throttling 3G users. There is "no change" in the 3G policy, a Verizon spokesperson told Ars.

[Bill_Satellite]

Doesn't that just mean they will cancel the unlimited plans as time moves forward instead?

[hotpepperkid]

I dumped Verizon couple years ago because their data plan sucked.

[Gulfcoast]

I hoped the FCC would get involved in this... way to go FCC. Thank you.

[Specularius]

I don't think there was any pressure. The FCC reminded Verizon that under the license for LTE, they were limited to what they could do and throttling the data violated one of those limitation. Just my thought on the matter.