The result: Glancing at the numbers on Verizon’s site can lead one to think that its “$70” 8 GB plan costs less than the unlimited plan, when in reality that 8GB plan will run you $90.Ĭonversely, I’ve seen some readers assume the new unlimited plan really adds up to $100 on one device, more than the current $95 cost of the unlimited plan Verizon stopped selling in 2011. Verizon usually lists rates exclusive of a $20 line-access charge, but it folds that cost into the advertised price of its unlimited plan: $80 for one device, $140 for two, $162 for three or $180 for four. The pricing of Verizon's new deal can be confusing as well. Sprint, for its part, announced Thursday that it would double the tethering allowance on its unlimited plan to 10 GB and include HD video streaming. T-Mobile will also let subscribers opt out of having streaming video limited to “480p” DVD-grade resolution.ĪT&T’s $100 unlimited plan does not let customers use their phones as a mobile hotspot, but as of Friday i t’s no longer reserved for subscribers to its DirecTV or U-verse TV services. Today, it constrains that to 3G speeds, which OpenSignal found averaged 4 Mbps. In other words, very slow.Įffective Friday, T-Mobile’s $70-including-taxes-and-fees unlimited plan- the only one sold to new subscribers-will also include 10 GB of LTE hotspot sharing. mobile networks found VzW 3G download speeds averaged just 850 kbps, a twentieth of its LTE-download average. Third-party tests suggest the actual speed may be slightly higher: The research firm OpenSignal’s new report on U.S. You get 10 GB a month of LTE tethering - per line, not account.Īfter that, your tethering drops to 3G speeds, which Verizon corporate-communications director Kelly Crummey said means a minimum of 600 kilobits per second. Verizon’s unlimited plan imposes a secondary limit on tethering, or using the phone as a portable WiFi hotspot to share its connectivity with another device. That’s not a hard cutoff or one you’re stuck with for the rest of the month, and user reports of other carriers’ “deprioritization” policies suggest the effects aren’t that painful. As Verizon’s frequently-asked-questions page warns, racking up 22 gigabytes of data on a line (not across all devices on your account) may lead the company to “prioritize usage behind other customers during network congestion.” The first is the theoretical threshold at which your service may slow. Its fine print contains qualifications that deserve a closer look. To sum up: Verizon is offering unlimited data, talking and texting for a single line, for $80 a month. That's before taxes and fees, which typically inflate the bil. The $80 unlimited plan - or, to phrase it more accurately, “unmetered” plan - that Verizon Wireless rolled out Sunday initially featured fewer carve-outs and restrictions than comparable offerings from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. But by Thursday, its three competitors had all responded to Verizon by loosening many of those limits. You can't ever read the fine print too carefully, and that is also the case with Verizon's new unlimited data plan.
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