Verizon internal documentation has confirmed the launch of two new prepaid plans being designed for smartphone users which will be officially launched next Friday February 1st. Both new plans replace the previous $80 smartphone plan which began life last year and was recently expanded to allow previously activated devices along with the iPhone 4 and 4S.
Image via HowardForums
The previous $80 smartphone plan will be grandfathered for current customers on the first while the $60 and $70 plans will be tiered based on the amount of monthly data access per month, with the first plan being allotted 500MB per month and the second plan being allotted 2GB per month. As an additional option to avoid more expensive per MB overage rates, Verizon is also offering an additional 1GB of data as an add-on for an extra $20. The overage rates for the new plans outside of the overage data package are as follows:
- $0.25/min voice
- $0.20/text
- $0.25/MMS
- $0.05/MB
With Verizon being pressured by MVNOs in terms of pricing, the smartphone plan realignments are necessary for it to remain competitive against other offerings such as StraightTalk and Page Plus, though in terms of service offered for both price points, Page Plus beats Verizon’s new offerings in terms of data allowance per month at the same $70 rate (5GB vs 2GB) while StraightTalk beats it in terms of monthly rate pricing ($45). However, with both plans still allowing previously activated smartphones and StraightTalk offering the Verizon iPhone 5, Verizon may be wise to open up the smartphone to its own prepaid service if it wishes to remain competitive.
Do you think there is anyway to trick this plan into getting a 4G device on it or even 4G data? For instance, you have a Droid 3 and cut the sim? I really want to move to prepaid with my Droid Razr Maxx, but flashing it to Page Plus and getting stuck with 2G data was not cutting it for me…
Verizon is specifically disallowing LTE access and provisioning on prepaid accounts (the system is setup for flagging by device and account type), so there’s no way to cheat it in order to get LTE access on these plans.