Verizon to disconnect unlimited data customers who use over 100GB/month

[NWCorona]

Source: Arstechnica

Verizon Wireless customers who have held on to unlimited data plans and use significantly more than 100GB a month will be disconnected from the network on August 31 unless they agree to move to limited data packages that require payment of overage fees.

Verizon stopped offering unlimited data to new smartphone customers a few years ago, but some customers have been able to hang on to the old plans instead of switching to ones with monthly data limits. Verizon has tried to convert the holdouts by raising the price $20 a month and occasionally throttling heavy users but stopped that practice after net neutrality rules took effect. Now Verizon is implementing a formal policy for disconnecting the heaviest users.


"Because our network is a shared resource and we need to ensure all customers have a great mobile experience with Verizon, we are notifying a very small group of customers on unlimited plans who use an extraordinary amount of data that they must move to one of the new Verizon Plans by August 31, 2016," a Verizon spokesperson told Ars. "These users are using data amounts well in excess of our largest plan size (100GB). While the Verizon Plan at 100GB is designed to be shared across multiple users, each line receiving notification to move to the new Verizon Plan is using well in excess of that on a single device."

The 100GB plan costs $450 a month.

Read more: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/verizon-to-disconnect-unlimited-data-customers-who-use-over-100gbmonth/

---

$450 is fucking ridiculous! Period.

[George II]

1. Who uses 100 GB a month?

[NWCorona]

4. Quite a few do. The Netflix HD stream clocks at about 3 gigs per hr

That adds up quickly

[sharp_stick]

12. Using mobile data

to stream movies isn't very common. At least not in the US.

[NWCorona]

13. But it's growing. I don't have a land line of any kind at home.

Except for power

[yeoman6987]

23. I don't have a hardline but never watch a movie on my phone

I use the home internet.

[still_one]

26. Maybe a short YouTube video, but if I am going to watch a movie, I will do it on a

television or cinema

[yeoman6987]

38. Exactly

[DisgustipatedinCA]

54. I chromecast movies from my phone to a large screen tv. Lots of people do.

It so happens that the back-end is using Wifi in my setup, but it could just as easily be cellular. Verizon has all the capacity in the world. They're putting artificial caps in place to gouge customers.

[yeoman6987]

57. That true I forgot about CROMECAST

[Lonusca]

39. You would be surprised

how many of us don't have access to DSL or cable. The only choice is mobile data

[Lancero]

44. Lets be honest here though...

The places that aren't likely to have DSL or cable are also the places that are likely to have poor reception at best.

I live in the middle of nowhere and am lucky enough to have low speed DSL. I've got a cell as well, but being the middle of nowhere I consider it lucky to get a single bar without having to walk around the house for five minutes to find that reception sweetspot.

[Lonusca]

47. Yes lets be honest

I'm not in the middle of nowhere. I am in the Bay area - 1 mile from a major interstate. No cable and no DSL available.

I have a 4G antenna on my house. Luckily I can afford it. The numbers I saw in an earlier post are pretty accurate for cost

The lack of high speed options for a HUGE portion of America are severely lacking. Especially if the posts I read around here are to be believed - that we should view internet as a utility

[Kali]

53. No cable or DSL here, phones work at 3G level and my internet is a cell modem.

I don't stream movies because I am not on an unlimited plan, but that is my internet in the middle of nowhere.

[scscholar]

46. This.

Got a lot of friends in downtown Seattle still on dial-up or ISDN.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Movie viewers and Live streamers

About 350 MB per hour for SD video and 1800 MB (1.2 GB) per hour for HD video.

That's 285 hours and 55 hours respectively per 100 GB.

There are 720 hours in a 30 day month.

So if you watch even only one HD movie per day, you'd hit the limit at day 27 or 28 (assuming 2 hour movies).

[7962]

11. So people will actually watch an entire MOVIE on a damn phone??

I guess I'm showing my age when I say "no way"

[BumRushDaShow]

18. Some of the "phones" are really "phablets"

a slightly-bigger-than-a-phone but smaller-than-a-tablet thing (6"+). And often do so on a plane (if it is downloaded on the device) or in a hotel with crappy cable channels, or perhaps as a passenger in a car on a long-distance trip and streamed (particularly those with kids but with no portable DVD player).

[7962]

49. "Phablet"!! Thats hilarious, I've never heard that term. is it yours?

[BumRushDaShow]

61. LOL I started seeing that term a couple years ago

The mobile industry seems to have coined that term to describe the larger-screen phones. They have spent several years trying to "size" an internet-connected phone that runs various applications & web browsers, to try to keep it "portable" (or "pocket-able&quot , but also to be able to read and type text using the popular web browsers without squinting (and this is often done by holding the phone horizontally, where the screen itself spins around to landscape mode).

I have an iPhone 6 Plus and it is larger than the more "phone-sized" iPhone 4 but smaller than my 7" Galaxytab.

[NWCorona]

19. I have before and it's not that bad.

But there's also using your phone as a Hotspot

[7962]

50. True, I have done that & it will spike my data

[NWCorona]

51. Yup! People often complain about how high the Hotspot data usage is

Without realizing that a lot of the streaming apps are often throttled in some way do to exclusive mobile carrier agreements. The Hotspot often bypasses these restrictions.

[NWCorona]

17. Chromecast is a data killer too! I couldn't believe my usage when I first got it

[aggiesal]

22. Also, you can purchase a hotspot unit ...

get an Unlimited Verizon account, and have multiple smartphones,
tablets, laptops, SmartTV's, SmartCars ...
all connected and streaming at the same time.

I think that this is tough $hit for Verizon.
A contract is a contract.
Because people were able to use this service > 100GB is just
too bad for Verizon.

[pamela]

41. Fulltimers

There are a growing number of people who live and travel fulltime in RVs who almost exclusively use mobile data devices like phones and hotspots. The real growth in this group is younger people who are still working. They call themselves Technomads.

The Technomads LOVE the Verizon unlimited plans so much that there are lots of articles about how to buy a grandfathered Verizon unlimited plan on EBay or other sources. They are kind of freaking out about this.

[Mosby]

2. i have an unlimited plan from verizon that I signed up for years ago

They have been trying to get me to sign up for a new plan by offering a new smartphone for free but I like my blackberry Q10.

[NWCorona]

5. Don't fall for it!

[Mosby]

30. the thing is that my monthy bill is around 100 dollars

I wish I could find out how much much data I'm downloading, I use slacker radio a lot. I also watch a lot of videos on my phone and browse the web.

[NWCorona]

31. Try this app or something similar if you are interested in your data use

I was losing packets and it helped me out.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.internet.speed.meter.lite&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dinternet+speed+meter+lite&pcampaignid=APPU_1_4TqRV_eHM4uwjwOsua_oAg

[Mosby]

36. thanks, I'll check it out. nt

[pamela]

43. Don't get rid of it-sell it if you don't want it.

There is a website called Technomadia that tells people how to buy these grandfathered Verizon plans. They are a hot commodity. I've thought about buying one on eBay because I travel fulltime and use a hotspot for all my data.

[RobinA]

63. I Have An

unlimited plan from AT&T, and they always want me to change. They'll get my unlimited plan back when they pry it from my cold dead hands. I also believe that unlimited means unlimited, that's what I signed up for and that's what I should get. I was warned of a slowdown once when I started streaming satellite radio. Maybe I will decide to pay only part of my bill from now on, if contract terms have become flexible in this day and age. Wonder how THAT would work out???

[truthisfreedom]

3. I hope they get their hands slapped so hard they fall off.

They can't promise one thing and deliver another. That's got a name.

BAIT AND SWITCH.

[Old Codger]

7. Easy fix

Go to Cricket, get unlimited 4g speed for 70 a month.

[NWCorona]

9. That's definitely an option for some.

For me the problem is that Cricket is limited to 8Mbps max download speeds.

[Old Codger]

20. Well

I sit here with a really really sucky 1 meg dsl so 8 would be heaven...I know Verizon 4g is pretty fast and would love to have those speeds but at $10 a gig it is way way too high..

[NWCorona]

21. Agreed! Those are ridiculous prices.

[aggiesal]

25. They say that, ...

but my last OOKLA Speedtest shows
9.17 Mbps download
12.07 Mbps upload.
Ping 75ms
Using Cricket, going through an AT&T hotspot unit,
and connecting my laptop and smartphone to the HS unit.

[NWCorona]

27. That's not bad and will actually get most things done.

I have a grandfathered unlimited T-Mobile account and when I first got it a few years ago. I would regularly see 80+ Mbps down. Now that the towers around me are seeing someuse. It's dropped in half but I'm still happy for the most part.

[Mosby]

34. i turned off my wifi on my phone

And I'm getting 9.2 mb download and 2.5 upload from Verizon.

With my home WiFi it's 25/6. But my WiFi is capable of much higher speeds, I have a wireless-N router.

[snooper2]

65. Residential use should be limited to 1.5Mbs - Nobody needs more than T1 speeds

When I'm president, I'll LOL

[still_one]

28. Actually a lot of options. T-Mobile, Sprint, even under the right bundled package AT&T,

and of course the smaller carriers like you mentioned, Cricket, which ironically OEM from the larger carriers

[hobbit709]

8. Why I only use my phone to make and receive calls. Occasionally I use the camera

but I download the pictures directly to my computer.
If I want to see some videos or whatever, I'd much rather watch it on my 30-inch 4K monitor than on my little phone screen.

When I leave my house the last thing I want is to get emails or any interruptions since I'm usually driving somewhere and if I meet people I'm not interested in looking at a little screen in my hand.

[NWCorona]

10. I commend you on your self-control!

I'm trying lol

[hobbit709]

14. I remember some time ago someone suggested a game to play.

You meet up with your friends somewhere. Everyone puts their phone in a pile on the table. First person to reach for their phone pays the tab.

[NWCorona]

15. That is a sweet game!

I'm wondering if we will end up like the humans did in Wall-E

[hobbit709]

16. I'm betting more on Idiocracy.

[geomon666]

24. So much for honoring a contract

fucking scum.

[still_one]

29. That is where I think they are going to have a problem.

[Lancero]

45. Honor is good until people take advantage of you for it.

[William Seger]

48. Those unlimited plans are expired contracts now

When Verizon decided to stop offering the unlimited plans a couple years ago, they didn't force people people to get a new plan when their existing contracts expired, but they didn't renew the contracts either, so those plans were put on a month-to-month basis. (When mine expired, I was able to keep it for about a year until I had to add a new phone and they wouldn't let me add it to that plan.) Sorry, but they're not under any obligation to offer that plan forever.

[tomhayes]

55. So why don't they just discontinue the plans for all?

The plans are not "unlimited" so they should stop offering them.

I'll bet some of the unlimited contracts had language that promised unlimited forever.

Either way Verizon should just stop offering them.

[christx30]

56. Once the contract is over,

and they can't charge you the early termination fee for canceling, they can do whatever they want. Just like you can cancel and go to another provider, they can stop offering you those terms. Probably nothing in there about 'forever'. Just for the life of the contract.
And the reason they don't take it away from everyone is because they can allot so much bandwidth to each person. At 100GB that customer no longer profitable.

I work for a cable company. Someone wanted to get service installed, but they were slightly outside our footprint. We cold have installed a tap to service her. From a tech standpoint, it would've been easy. But it would have cost us between $10k and $100k to do it. And at $40 per month, it wouldn't have been worth it. So we just told her it was unserviceable.

[24601]

62. Verizon probably would win; however, I believe that a case can be made that at the time we chose the

unlimited plan, Verizon agreed we could keep it as long as we never switched to a different plan.

Then, when they found out that they underestimated usage, they wanted to end them on their terms.

So consumers paid more for these plans when data use was lower, in part because of the assurances that would always be there for us.

So what should Verizon do to make it right? I'm not unreasonable, a payment of $250,000 per customer for breaking their promises should do it. They can take my payment out of the CEO's bonus and he'll never miss it.

[christx30]

66. As long as you are within a contract,

both sides have to abide by its terms.
If you aren't happy with the terms, you have to wait until the contract expires before you can leave. "Man, I didn't know about XYZ at the beginning. I can't wait until I can cancel in September and go to AT&T."
Verizon is pretty much doing that. They abided by the terms until the end, then they cancelled.
You wouldn't want to be held to the terms of the contract after it expired.

[CobaltBlue]

32. Data Caps vs. Consumers' Usage

Some cable companies have implemented limits on data, like 250GB per month, before imposing an additional fee.

I don't have the technical knowledge to know whether Verizon (or any mobile carrier) is truthful. (This may be a FCC matter. Are these data caps necessary?) But, I would be very interested to know how people are using up so much data during a given activity period. It makes me imagine they don't have a high-speed Internet service, at home, and rely totally on cellular data—and are viewing video content just about every moment they are not asleep or at work/school.

I have only been using a smartphone since 2015. (I was a late bloomer.) I am with Verizon. I don't come anywhere near my data plan's allowance. But, I have a couple family members on my account. The pricing of it all works for us. (Our phones are owned outright. So, I price it according to data + line access = $xxx.xx.)

Make no mistake—this will upset a lot of the "data hogs." But, for those grandfathered subscribers, they should not be surprised. They were not going to be able to rid it for much longer. And, with what Verizon is doing, it will likely happen with AT&T (if it hasn't happened yet).

[NWCorona]

35. I'm obviously biased but I have an issue on how one uses there

Data. Whether it be home or mobile.

As to how people are using up data so fast is easy. HD! Ultra HD can pull up to 8 gigs per hour and 4k is even more.

[Bradical79]

67. And VR

Galaxy S7 came with a free VR headset. One of the first things I did was watch a movie in a virtual movie theatre in Netflix.

[YOHABLO]

33. I'm not with Verison. I don't have a smartphone (yet) Thinking about it. Flip phone forever.

I'm living in the dark ages it seems. I actually think smartphones are dumbing the world down. People need to go to the library and read.

[NWCorona]

37. Technology is definitely a double edged sword

I agree with you on the library. E-readers do nothing for me at all! I need to feel the paper in my hands. There is nothing like having a new book feel broken in like an old shoe after reading it.

[christx30]

42. My wife got a free trial of Amazon Unlimited,

and has been downloading, reading books for the month. She's read over 75 books in that time. Goes through a 200 page book in about 2 hours.
She couldn't do that with a paper book.

[Bluenorthwest]

40. My favorite smartphone feature is the Kindle App, basically it's a bunch of books with me

at all times, if I have to wait I'm reading. Very convenient.

[Kali]

52. I don't think either of the two of my kids who have unlimited data use that much

but fuck verizon if they cut them off, they will be going elsewhere!

[astral]

58. That kind of data usage would be costing Verizon $$

When these plans were created, this kind of abuse could not be foreseen. It would be like a customer going to an all-you-can eat buffet and just staying there for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All day, every day.

I'm on the phone company's side on this one. I had a friend who had an apartment with heat included. she left the heat turned up and the windows opened.

There is a reason unlimited data plans are no longer offered, oh wait, it sounds like they are still offered.

I'm a fairly big data user too, but I pay dearly for my plan. I use usually 20-25 gigs a month, and end up losing some of my use-it-or-lose-it, every month.

Anyways people are just killing the goose that layed the golden egg by pushing the envelope on their service. But hey if just one nice goose dinner is what you want... then its back to hot dogs ; )

[NWCorona]

59. FYI

Analysis: Wireless data caps more about profit than congestion


http://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/10/analysis-wireless-data-caps-more-about-profit-than-congestion/

[DisgustipatedinCA]

60. It costs Verizon very little.

They have a thorough fiber plant across their entire service area, meaning they have nearly unlimited back-end capacity (see DWDM). The high end network gear is peanuts for Verizon. They're gouging customers.

[RobinA]

64. But The Various Industries

involved have pushed for greater and greater data usage. I can't go to the video store anymore (my preference), I have to stream the movie. My options are severely limited when it comes to actually purchasing music in some hard form, so I have to stream it. Personally, I hate this streaming and downloading thing, because ultimately I don't own what I bought. So companies that have created this massive need for data transfer have created the problem.

Me, I've pretty much taken myself out of the market. I'm not paying money for a library of music that is one drop on the pavement from not existing. Movies? Forget it. I used to be a massive renter of movies. No longer, what I want just isn't available.