Verizon announced that they were bringing back Unlimited on Sunday afternoon, and it was officially available on Monday. For a company that often said customers don’t need or want unlimited data, this was a pretty big surprise. And this also means that all four national carriers in the US offer up unlimited data in some form or another. Verizon is offering unlimited for $80/month for a single line, which is cheaper than many people likely expected. So what are the catches? Well let’s explain everything.
The cost is $80/month or as low as $45/line/month for a family of four. That seems pretty reasonable for Verizon. But there are a few caveats here. That $80 is only for those with paperless billing and those that sign up for auto-pay. Without auto-pay, that’ll cost you $85/month. Additionally, this does not include the cost of your smartphone. It only includes unlimited talk, text and data as well as the line access fee (which doesn’t make much sense now that there aren’t pools of data). So if you get something like the Moto Z Droid, which is currently $13/month, that would bring your total to $93/month before taxes and fees.
Now as far as usage goes, this is not a “truly unlimited” plan, it actually falls a bit more inline with what T-Mobile and Sprint are doing with their unlimited plans. But maybe not as aggressive. You do get unlimited data, however Verizon notes that if you use more than 22GB, you may see your speeds throttled. Additionally, you do get unlimited talk, text and data in Canada and Mexico, but only the first 500MB is 4G LTE speeds, afterwards you are throttled. While there is 10GB of mobile hotspot or tethering data available, it’s not 4G LTE speeds, it’s 3G. And there doesn’t seem to be a way to upgrade that to 4G speeds. When it comes to video, Verizon is not throttling you. They are delivering video to your device the same as what the app is streaming. For instance, if you are watching a 4K video on YouTube, you should be getting a 4K stream on your device.
For multiple lines, pricing is pretty normal, looking at $100 plus $20 per line. So two lines is $140, three is $160, etc. The plan is available for business and government lines as well. It’s basically available to everyone. It seems that for grandfathered users of the original unlimited plan, you won’t be forced to switch to this one. There’s currently no word on whether they will continue to try and force users off of that old plan or not though. But this isn’t a replacement for that old plan. Additionally, the 7GB and 12GB plans are going away. So there will be the S, M, and L plans (2GB, 4GB and 8GB) for those that don’t want unlimited data. Finally, access fees for tablets and hotspots have jumped to $20/month from $10/month. Smartwatches remain at $5/month.
That’s basically everything we know about Verizon’s new Unlimited plan, which they are calling simply “Verizon Unlimited”. It seems to be a pretty great plan, especially for those on Verizon or needing their coverage. It comes in cheaper than AT&T’s offering, but still more expensive than T-Mobile and Sprint. The upside here is that video is not throttled, even though tethering is, but at least it’s slightly faster 3G instead of 2G/EDGE. You can check out the new plan at the link below.
Verizon Unlimited Plan