With Unlimited Data Gone, Verizon Touts Data Monitoring

At least at&t offered a $5 discount for 2gb. Now Verizon is charging the same by providing way less. What value are they providing?

If you're already on Verizon...

...why would you cancel if you already have unlimited data grandfathered in?

I think he's just pissed on a philosophical level...as am I. $30 per month for unlimited data was overpriced enough. Now things are just criminal.

Instead of attracting more customers through price reduction, they're taking advantage of their customer's "need for smart phones/mobile web access". They have to be smugly congratulating themselves. It's the classic tale of giving less for more. The punch line to this one however, is that service costs them such a small fraction of what we pay.
I dont mind the price of milk going up in light of fuel/grain prices rising. BUT, what magical ingredient to the ISP/VSP is increasing that justifies their action? None. They cite data caps as required to reign in "heavy data users who burden the network". Fine. Ill believe that. Now, just give us "normal folk" 2GB per month with free tethering for $15.00...and those "heavy users" can pay more accordingly. Sorry, I can barely keep a straight face while typing that dream.

Im really not a hippie socialist on most topics, but these fat cats need to be shot.

Can you hear me now?

Verizon really botched this up. They not only are charging more than AT&T and try to make us forget that by offering usage notification, but they are trying to sell this as a good thing for consumers. The marketing/sales guys that thought all this up should be looking for new jobs. Are they really that out of touch? I understand they want to make money but stop playing customers as idiots. Enough already! Just state it like it is. You want more money and are offering less. No data monitoring is gonna make us feel better about less for the same price.

SMS threshold alerts subjected to delays

Do you know that the SMS alerts send by the carriers like AT&T and Verizon are subjected to delays? It's not really true that the carriers provide real time data usage tracking and alerts to the customers. Their figures are not updated immediately after you used some data. It could take hours or days for the carrier to refresh and give you the latest usage amount. This is mentioned in the disclaimers. For example, on AT&T's site (http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/data-plans.jsp), it reads: Data usage information generally will be available for viewing within 24 hours or less of actual data usage.

Thus, it would be wise for a consumer to install an app like DataMan to provide true real time tracking that gets the usage amount directly from the iPhone. It's stats are always up to date. Hence, its threshold alerts are real time. DataMan is able to alert the user using local notification once a user-customizable threshold is exceeded. This helps stop overage charges.

At least at&t offered a $5 discount for 2gb. Now Verizon is charging the same by providing way less. What value are they providing?

I 100% agree. I actually think (and demonstrate (http://www.techperfect.net/2011/07/unlimited-data-plans-can-hurt-average-consumer/)) that capped plans can be good for most consumers when they are reasonable like AT&T did, but verizon is just plain old gouging.

This killed it for me. Too much greed, I plan to cancel and go ore paid or maybe try straight talk.

I would love Virgin Mobile/Sprint to pick up the iPhone 4s/5. The dream would be a ~500.00 unlocked phone with a discounted unlimited plan (akin to many non US service providers).

Nasty

Part of what is nasty about this is that we don't have control over our data usage. People send spam, large photos, files, etc that I don't want. It adds up to a lot of data every day that is just junk mail but makes the telephone company profits.

The "Data Calculator" is bogus because it fails to take into account the incoming emails which far, far outweigh my outgoing emails by two orders of magnitude in count and by about seven orders of magnitude in data usage. Scam alert!

Imagine if we had to pay the incoming postage to the US Post Office to receive junk mail in our postal mail box? That would get outlawed pretty fast. Well, the phone companies are doing this too and getting away with it.

Until you realize a 2GB 'bucket' is $40 a month ;)

And if you want to tether it will be capped at 1.5gb, and be 60.