Verizon has made a substantial change to its prepaid mobile service in the wake of increasing competition in the space by virtual operators and other carriers. Beginning today, the new Allset plan slate from Verizon is designed to cut base plan costs and add features not normally found on other brands without significant additional expense.
Split into two main plans for featurephones and smartphones, the base plan for feature phones starts at $35 monthly before additional taxes and fees, which features 500 voice minutes and unlimited SMS text messaging while stepping up to unlimited monthly voice makes the plan jump to $45 monthly. Smartphone plans start at $45 and include the aforementioned base features as well as unlimited voice minutes. International SMS messaging to Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico is also included.
What makes the Allset plan different is in the way additional data packages are priced, with an additional 500 MB package for either featurephones or smartphones costing $5 monthly, 1GB at $10 and 3GB at $25, with unused data carrying over every month. As an additional incentive to purchase data, the 1GB and 3GB packages feature a 90-day duration period for every purchase, making it more economical to purchase the larger data packages to spread costs over time for lighter users.
Finally, the Allset plan for smartphones also includes mobile hotspot support for smartphones, making the above options even more cost-effective, even though the service is still limited to 3G smartphones. For a limited time Verizon is doubling data for all new smartphone users to 1GB and throwing in 1,000 voice minutes per month for international calls to users on both $45 Allset plans when enrolling in auto-pay during initial activation.
Way to little, way to late Verizon. If Verizon’s LTE network wasn’t so over subscribed I think they would open it up. I experienced the slow down myself over the last year.
No LTE, no reason to use Verizon prepaid.
The problem is other then the moto g and the iPhone 4S there are no real options for Verizon prepaid.
Had they allowed LTE capable phones but using 3G perhaps that could have worked because there are more and more LTE phones getting put in a drawer (droid charge, bionic etc)
What reason would people want this?
People that want this are ones that want to stay with Verizon (free Verizon to Verizon mobile) but hate paying $80-90 for on post-paid. My wife is perfectly happy with the iPhone 4 and only uses less than 500 MB a month. If it wasn’t for all the taxes and fees that are accrued on top of the original plan on post-paid, I would go with post-paid. Nebraska has one of the highest taxes+fee percentage of all the states. I have to approximate about 20% onto my plan. So even if it is only 3g, it’s worth the price especially if you are around wifi 90% of the time. I will have to agree, why not allow 4G phones, but you can’t activate the 4G and only use 3g. They will have to sooner or later, or offer more phones like the Moto G, but with a heck of a lot more memory than 8 GB.
Agreed they will have to do something sooner or later, those bell heads running Verizon still dont get that prepaid is the fastest growing market in the us.
With rollover data packages and access to a hotspot included, this doesn’t seem like such a bad deal. But I’m using the ALLSET plan with a Moto G and I can’t figure out how to use it as a hotspot. The Tethering and mobile hotspot option has been removed from the settings and the various hotspot apps I’ve tried tell me I need a Mobile Broadband subscription from Verizon. Anybody gotten this to work?
Still waiting to hear back from Verizon on the availability of Mobile Hotspot for the Moto G, John. I’ll update with a new post once I get official word.