Telecom & Wireless

How Verizon's Price Hikes Affect Data Plans

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Calling its new pricing plan transformative, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) on Wednesday raised prices on all its five of its data plans. The new plan also allows customers to change their data plan size and options anytime they want, as often as they want.

The company also launched a new mobile app, My Verizon, that includes real-time data and account information, a data usage monitor, a shop to help customers purchase a new phone, support and a simplified bill.

The new pricing model includes five options, Small to XX-Large, just like T-shirts:

  • The Small package costs $35 a month for 2 gigabyte (GB) of data and replaces the former small package that included 1 GB of data for $30.
  • The Medium package boosts the data plan from 3 GB to 4 GB per month and raises the price from $45 to $50 a month.
  • The Large data plan gives users 8 GB of data for $70 a month, up from 7 GB for $60.
  • The X-Large package includes 16 GB of data for $90 a month, up from 12 GB for $80.
  • The XX-Large plan bumps the price from $100 to $110, but users get 24 GB of data under the new plan, compared with 18 GB under the old plan.

All plans allow users to carryover data for one month and, for customers with X-Large and XX-Large data plans, free data overage protection called Safety Mode. Customers with other data plans can purchase Safety Mode for $5 a month. Safety Mode essentially throttles your data speed and eliminates charges for data usage above your plan maximum. The three smaller plans also have to pay more for unlimited calling to Canada and Mexico, plus $2 a day for unlimited talk, text and data when U.S. customers visit those countries.

Given that data overages cost $15 per GB under all the plans, the largest plans stand to get the most benefit from the new pricing scheme. Customers with an XX-Large plan get an additional 6 GB of data for $10 more, an increase of one-third in data at a 10% price boost. X-Large plans get a third more data from a 12.5% price hike. Small plan users do pretty well, too, though, getting double the data for a price increase of around 17%.

Customers with either the Medium or Large packages get 1 additional GB for $5 or $10 a month more, respectively. That works out to one-third more data for a price increase of around 10% for a Medium plan, while Large plan users get 14% more data for a 16% price increase.

Per GB under the new plans, small users pay the most, $17.50 per GB and XX-Large users pay the least, about $4.60 per GB, down from $35 per GB and about $5.55 per GB, respectively.

Medium plan users now pay $12.50 per GB, compared with $15 per GB under the old plan.

Large users actually pay more per GB, $8.75 under the new plan compared with $8.57 under the old plan, and X-Large users pay about $1 per GB less under the new plan.

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