Back in October, Fran Shammo, Verizon's former Chief Financial Officer, tweeted out that Verizon Wireless had no plans to bring back the unlimited data plan. It's hard to imagine that Shammo didn't field that question quite a bit, especially with T-Mobile, and even Sprint, getting a lot of media attention with their own unlimited plans.
Recently I asked all of you if you even need an unlimited plan. I asked because Verizon had just launched a commercial that made it clear it believes that "most people" only need 5GB of data per month, and so paying for an unlimited plan, in Verizon's eyes, seemed silly. "Not every data plan is one size fits all," as they put it.
I use a different amount of data every month, and, I can safely say that for the most part I can make 5GB of data per month work. But that's being consciously aware of how much data I'm using, which is annoying. Especially when other carriers offer not only unlimited data, but also the ability to not worry about using data because of it.
But that was October, and here we are in February and over the weekend Verizon Wireless announced "Verizon Unlimited." That means customers that sign up for the plan, whether they're new customers or current subscribers, get unlimited LTE data. That's up to 22GB of data in a month's stretch, of course, before the customer can be throttled if the network is congested. There are other caveats, too, which you can gather up in this report.
Verizon offering an unlimited plan (again) is good news. It will, hopefully, only get better from here, with added features and, hopefully, reduced prices (I tried to write that with a straight face, it did not work). But Verizon is going to be Verizon, and they're going to charge what they want for their "better network." I'm just glad to see that customers aren't being limited right out of the gate with their data allowance, even while they're paying comparable prices to the competition.
It isn't a perfect plan, but, at least it's a plan. What do you think, though? Are you happy to see Verizon finally offering an unlimited plan? If you aren't already a customer of the Big Red network, do you think you'll switch? Let me know!