Is there something I’m missing, or are Verizon Wireless’s data access plans much more expensive than that of most other mobile phone carriers?
I have an old treo, and I would love to be able to surf the net on it, use putty to ssh into my servers, use google maps, or god forbid, tethering for my laptop. But from what I can tell, full broadband access would cost me 60 USD a month, and this is for a 5 gig monthly allowance, it’s not even unlimited (25 cents a MB over the limit).
(This is of course on top of my voice plan which is I think 50 USD for 450 minutes, which is also pricey, but I feel like the network is superior to those of other carriers here in NYC so I don’t mind that so much.)
Meanwhile my friends tell me they pay 15 or 20 dollars for their unlimited data plan with Sprint or AT&T (i.e., iPhone users) or whoever else and they happily surf on their smartphones all day long.
So what gives? I’m a computer dude but sadly I’m not very up on mobile phone tech.
Sounds to me like there is some misunderstanding going on. Service for the iPhone, I believe, costs $70 a month. It’s part of the deal they struck with AT&T-- the phone itself would be cheaper but the service would cost more. It’s why I decided to not get one.
It also doesn’t make sense for smart phone service to be that cheap when the lowest-level plans for non-smart phones are rarely under $30 a month.
Maybe they meant the data service cost only $15-20?
The $70+ plans at Verizon include a voice plan. The $15-$20 are what you pay if you have a ‘regular’ phone but want unlimited data as well. BTW, most of these plans don’t include teathering unless you want to pay extra for it.
The single line unlimited voice, data, messaging plans are $139.99/mo
The Unlimited data plans for smartphones is $29.99/mo above and beyond the calling plan. So a basic 450 min plan w/smartphone data package would be basically $70/mo.
Former Verizon CSR here: Drachillix is right on the money. IIRC there are a few PDAs that require a $44.99 plan, but the Treo is not one of them (unless you want to get your email from an enterprise server, which would almost always only be work email, or if you want to tether). The $60 you are thinking of would be a data plan with tethering, which mean using your PDA as a modem for a laptop/PC/mac.
I work in IT for a company who does a lot of business with Verizon. We were just told today by our account rep that the data plans for air cards were changing to 5GB/month for $59.99 and 50MB/month for $29.99 because of the increased usage of streaming video and other bandwidth-hogging activities. Our Blackberry plans still include unlimited data.
Sorry to bump this but I have a neurosis about thanking ppl who reply to my threads. So thanks y’all.
Bottom line is, drachillix and others were more or less right, there is a $80 plan that includes some minutes and data access (the $60 standalone access was actually broadband service for laptops using a pc card). I still think this is a lot compared to other service providers but not by as much as I did originally. The iPhone plan that most ppl have is pretty much equivalent to verizon’s $80 but is $10 cheaper, and I would have thought that if anyone, it’s the iPhone users who would be a target for overpriced plans
(Although I’m still not totally clear on whether any or all of these data plans include full internet access like outbound ssh and whatnot. Sometimes the descriptions make it seem like they’re limited to email access and web browsing.)
