Daniel Eran Dilger
A report by MacWorld confirmed the mobile hotspot details with Verizon's executive director of corporate communications, Brenda Raney.
Verizon's mobile hotspot plan allows users, for an extra $20 option on top of their data plan, to share their mobile 3G service with up to five WiFi devices (such as an iPad, iPod touch, MacBook, or any other WiFi device).
The iPhone 4 tethering plan has its own 2GB monthly cap, according to the report, with each additional gigabyte costing another $20. Previous Verizon tethering plans cost $30 but delivered 5GB of data, in addition to the user's data plan. That means the unlimited plan with tethering will cost a total of $50, with 2GB for tethering and unlimited use of mobile data.
AT&T's $20 tethering plan currently only supports USB or Bluetooth tethering to a single device at once, and rather than offering a separate data pool, the plan counts use against the user's plan. That means the 2GB data plan with tethering costs $45 total, but still only offers 2GB of data per month.
Unlimited data
Verizon earlier announced that its new CDMA iPhone 4 would only be offered with an unlimited data plan costing $30, with no option for a limited use data plan as the company now allows its current smartphone users to choose.
In the future, Verizon says it will phase out the unlimited data plan, following AT&T toward tiered service plans. It has not detailed when it will do this, nor how much it will charge.
AT&T also announced earlier this month that it would be simplifying its texting plans to two options: 1000 messages for $10, or unlimited texts for $20.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
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43 Comments
Uhm...Verizon....none of your pricing announcements have convinced me to jump over to you. You need lower prices than AT&T if I'm going to go to a slower network and lose concurrent voice/data.
Uhm...Verizon....none of your pricing announcements have convinced me to jump over to you. You need lower prices than AT&T if I'm going to go to a slower network and lose concurrent voice/data.
Unfortunately, Verizon doesn't care about you, nor me, who needs a SIM slot for international travel. Verizon is too busy caring about the 10+ million who will come over or upgrade to an iPhone 4 on their network because they want better connectivity, have corporate accounts or hate AT&T for whatever reason.
Uhm...Verizon....none of your pricing announcements have convinced me to jump over to you. You need lower prices than AT&T if I'm going to go to a slower network and lose concurrent voice/data.
Geez. After putting up with people complaining about how bad the AT&T network was and how much better Verizon is, we're also going to have to listen to people complain about the pricing, too?
If, as has been claimed, millions of people see the AT&T network as inferior due to dropped calls, then that should be plenty to get them to switch to Verizon. Lower prices shouldn't be necessary.
US 29.99 unlimited data plan + 20.00 tethering seems fair enough given that AT&T offers neither at this point (to its new iPhone subscribers).
It's obscene that they charge $15 for Exchange server usage!