What prevents Verizon Wireless from ending it’s grandfathered unlimited data plan? (they obviously don’t like it)
Also is this different for 4G customers due to the frequency used and the FCC stipulations such use?
What prevents Verizon Wireless from ending it’s grandfathered unlimited data plan? (they obviously don’t like it)
Also is this different for 4G customers due to the frequency used and the FCC stipulations such use?
They did, as far as I know. My business has 5 phones on the plan that were all grandfathered in, but about a year and a half ago they were all forced down to 2 gigs as each person got a new phone.
I don’t think there’s any reason beyond the PR considerations of wanting to at least appear to still be keeping their word when they told customers they’d be able to keep the plans indefinitely. It seems like everyone I know who has a grandfathered unlimited plan basically hates Verizon for the ever-increasing set of hoops they have to jump through to keep it, though, so I’m not sure how well that’s really worked.
No, they’re still there. The big thing with the unlimited plans is that you lose it if you get a new subsidized phone. So theoretically you need to buy a phone for full retail price (or buy one off eBay or something) if you want to keep it. There used to be various ways to sneak around it by shuffling phones around lines, but Verizon has mostly closed those loopholes now. There was also a brief period where Verizon was saying they were going to throttle the unlimited users who used over a certain amount, but they relented on that.
I am currently on a grandfathered unlimited plan, so they didn’t phase them out yet. They could at any time, and I often wonder why they don’t. In fact I’m eagerly waiting for the day they do so I’ll finally have an excuse to jump ship to a carrier that supports vanilla Android.
There still are a few loopholes. A few months ago I got a new phone by going to an authorized retailer and they added a new line for me and threw the phone in with that. Over two years it was still significantly cheaper than buying a new phone at full retail. And then I transferred my old upgrade, which I couldn’t use, to the new line and used it to get a new iPhone that I gave to my mom, and she activated it on another carrier and Verizon never complained. Because it was unactivated, the other line still remained a $10/mo dummy line instead of the ridiculous amounts they want for an actual smartphone plan. All that plus the FCC rules which say they can’t charge for 4G tethering, and yeah, you really do wonder they don’t crack down on this.
They know what’s going on, I’m sure, but as time goes on we’re probably a smaller and smaller proportion of their users and overall bandwidth, and they probably figure the goodwill isn’t costing them much. Better they make some money from us than none at all, right? Bandwidth is dirt cheap. The real expenses for them must be building out towers and other infrastructure, licenses, staff, etc. Whether the few unlimited users use 1GB or 20GB a month is mostly a rounding error on their part…