Verizon iPhone users still clinging on to their grandfathered unlimited data plans will shortly face a $20 price hike. The wireless carrier confirmed to CNET that it plans to raise the price of its old unlimited plan, meaning grandfathered customers will face a monthly data plan charge of $49. The price increase will take place once each individual contract expires…
It seems AT&T thinks throttling the data speeds of customers without telling them about it isn’t such a big deal. The Federal Trade Commission sued AT&T back in 2014 for “deceptive and unfair data throttling” after the company imposed caps on unlimited data contracts, beyond which it reduced their data speeds by almost 90%. The Federal Communications Commission joined the party last month, fining AT&T $100 million – and The Hill reports that the carrier now wants that fine reduced to just $16,000.
The Commission’s findings that consumers and competition were harmed are devoid of factual support and wholly implausible,” the company wrote in its filing. “Its ‘moderate’ forfeiture penalty of $100 million is plucked out of thin air, and the injunctive sanctions it proposes are beyond the Commission’s authority.”
The FTC had stated that it could legally have imposed fines of $16,000 per affected consumer, but that would have resulted in an “astronomic” fine, so chose to limit the total penalty to one large enough to deter future violations. AT&T had originally claimed that it was doing nothing wrong, but Ars Technica notes that the company amended its policy in May so that throttling was applied only when the network was congested.
AT&T has not offered unlimited data plans to new customers for some years, but has a small-ish group of customers who remain on grandfathered plans which remain valid for as long as the customer retains the plan.
Apple last month removed subsidies from both AT&T and Verizon iPhones, moving to plans where customers pay the full cost of the phone on an installment plan.
Photo: Re/code
Verizon is following its More Everything holiday promotion today with a new limited time promo for its customers, the carrier announced today. Starting tomorrow, Verizon will begin offering customers data plans at new price points from 1GB up to 20GB with most price tiers being reduced by $10/month compared to their previous rates.
With the new plans, customers can take advantage of plans with the same data amount at a cheaper rate, or pay the same price and receive a data increase. Additionally, Verizon will introduce more data tiers with 12GB, 14GB, and 16GB options.
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AT&T announced today that it’s increasing the data allotment on two of its wireless service plans. Starting on Sunday, November 2nd, Ma Bell will begin offering 3GB of data for $40 per month and 6GB of date for $70 a month. Also sweetening the pot, AT&T is tossing in unlimited talk, text and international messaging at no additional charge.
Today, T-Mobile’s continued its aggressive marketing blitz, announcing a new promotion that doubles tablet data for its customers, along with an increase to the number of lines supported by its family plans. Starting on September 3rd for $10 extra per month, T-Mobile will match Simple Choice data allotments by up to 5GB, with the extra data bucket being available exclusively to your network-connected tablet.
In the world of wireless, words like “unlimited data” have their restrictions if you take the time to read the fine print of a carrier’s service agreement and it appears that T-Mobile is not exempt from such practices. An alleged internal memo obtained by TmoNews details how the company will address customers suspected of using its network to access peer-to-peer file sharing services.
While Android devices have the greatest market share, the evidence that iOS users do more with their devices continues to grow. The latest survey by analytics company Arieso found that iDevices took six out of the top ten slots in terms of the amount of data downloaded by 2013 devices. All numbers use the iPhone 3G as their base, and exclude the iPad Air which was launched after the survey ended.
Unsurprisingly, the company found that our appetite for data grows with each generation of device, as they become increasingly capable. iPhone 5s owners, for example, download 19 percent more data than iPhone 5 owners.
But tellingly, iPhone 5s owners download 41 percent more data than the Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung’s current flagship handset (a figure that increases to 54 percent in developing markets). A previous study showed that iPhone users spend more time using their phones than do Android owners.
In a separate analysis by the UK consumer association Which?, the iPhone 5c was found to have the greatest amount of usable storage space after built-in apps were accounted for. Comparing the 16GB models of eight leading smartphones, the 5c was found to leave users with 12.6GB of storage, with the 5s at 12.2GB taking third place behind the Nexus 5. The Samsung Galaxy S4 took bottom place, with just over half of its 16GB space available to the user.
Via TechCrunch
According to a report from AllThingsD, Verizon Wireless will soon change the way it charges customers for cellular/data plans in a major way. Rather than charging customers for phones calls or messages sent, the report claimed Verizon would charge “almost exclusively based on how much data” is consumed. The new “Share Everything” plans will also be the first in the United States that allows users to share their data with up to 10 devices through a single account:
The plans, known as “Share Everything,” allow users an unlimited number of calls and texts and also allow data usage to be pooled among up to 10 devices on one account. With the move, Verizon becomes the first U.S. carrier to offer the ability for customers to share a bucket of data across multiple devices.
AllThingsD noted that AT&T also has plans for shared data options, but it did not provide more details. As for Verizon’s new plans, which will apparently kick-in June 28, the report explained the cost of the data plan and pricing metrics based on a per-device fee. In other words, you will have to pay roughly $40 per smartphone ($10 per tablet), and then opt for either a $50 1GB data plan or a $100 10GB plan. While the report claimed the new pricing should not impact the cost of plans for users who continue consuming the same amount of data, it is clear that those signing a new plan for a single smartphone are getting a bit less for their money:
