A new report has surfaced citing unnamed sources that have confirmed to Droid-Life that Verizon will drop its long-standing LTE blockade on prepaid and will begin to both allow and sell 4G LTE devices on Verizon prepaid beginning later this month. For Verizon to do an about face on allowing LTE access on prepaid after years of statements all but confirming that the carrier would never consider such access means that it is indeed feeling pressured by its competitors in the prepaid sector, such as AT&T’s Cricket and T-Mobile’s MetroPCS, as well as AT&T and T-Mobile themselves through GoPhone and T-Mobile Prepaid, respectively.
Image via Droid-Life
The way the access will work according to the report is that starting on the 17th, Verizon’s ALLSET prepaid plans will be made compatible with 4G LTE devices in Verizon’s lineup, which means that Verizon will sell both new and Certified Pre-Owned 4G LTE devices in the prepaid lineup and will also allow the activation of previously activated 4G LTE devices with full support for the features found in the Bridge Data add-on, which now includes mobile hotspot access and 60-day access cycles.
However, what is not known is whether pricing will go up to reflect the addition of LTE access, as Verizon’s current bonus data and international calling promos for new customers will also end on July 17th, as evidenced by the screencap above. What is also not immediately known is whether Verizon will attempt to cap LTE data speeds by throttling to a specific speed for prepaid customers, as AT&T does with Cricket customers. Nevertheless, this will indeed be a boon to current and potential Verizon Prepaid customers should the timeline pan out.
When with Verizon I was paying $150 a month for two phones to share 4GB of data. Now with AT&T I pay $145 for four phones to share 10GB of data. All phones with unlimited talk and text. I’m saving $900 a year people!