After AT&T announced that they were moving to tiered data plans, Verizon soon followed with the idea. Unlimited data usage is starting to haunt the big markets which would leave Sprint and T-Mobile to offer unlimited plans to continue to compete with the competition. Tiered data plans would benefit the customers who do not use as much, but would greatly impact the customers that suck as much as they can. The Motorola Droid X launched last week and Verizon has already noticed 5X more usage. They should take into account that marketing a device capable of doing everything will give the users the idea and the desire to push their phone to the limits usage wise. Below are three reasons why Verizon is headed to a tiered data plan very soon.
- Reason #1
- Verizon has already stated that they would be headed to a tiered data plan, shortly after AT&T made the announcement that they would withdraw their unlimited plan. Verizon jumped aboard that train quickly while John Killian, chief financial officer of Verizon, said “We will probably need to change the design of our pricing where it will not be totally unlimited, flat rate.â€
- Reason #2
- MyVerizon application update adding the ability to keep track of the data usage on your device. No one would need to know how much data they are using if they had an unlimited data plan, so this could be a sign that users might start watching more and taking account for the usage if the unlimited plans are thrown out.
- Reason #3
- Jennifer Byrne, Verizon’s business development executive director, said that,“On Droid X, we’re seeing something like 5x the data usage of any other device.†While she was speaking on the topic of data usage in the mobile market, she also stated “While we may have had the first app store, GetItNow, we’ve learned a lot, with the watershed being theiPhone. It’s a drastic change from the walled garden stage to the open approach. It’s been a very big shift.†Verizon has “embraced†it, Byrne said. “We’ve seen a tremendous response – so its validated the decision.†This is definitley not helping the case to continue the unlimited data plans.
We understand that for big networks, unlimited data usage are costing them a lot, but please consider a long term decision. This is great news for customers on smaller networks like Sprint and T-Mobile, unlimited data is definitely a sales pitch.
Is there anymore reasons that Verizon might be capping their data that you can think of? Let us know in the comments below.
