Fair warning: I am going to be using this post to complain about my cell phone carrier.
I am due for a new cell phone very soon, and "due" is a very light word for what is actually happening. Nearly four months ago before I went to Eurovision, I dropped my previous cell phone, an HTC Trophy running Windows Phone 7, and it was quickly evident that it was unusable due to the extensive damage sustained to its screen.
Rather than instantly buy a new phone off contract, I decided to wait until my upgrade date, as well as until after my trip to Europe ended. What I ended up doing was switching first to the Palm Pixi Plus, and then to the HTC Touch Pro2, an old Windows Mobile 6.5 phone with a great keyboard but a horrible temperament.
Once I got back from Europe, I started to look at my phone and data usage habits and compared them with the plans available on my carrier. This was nearly three months ago and out of desperation and slight depression about the state of wireless plans, I have been inactive on the issue since. I'm on Verizon Wireless and unless I switch carriers (which may be a bad idea, Verizon is the most consistent carrier where I live) or massively amend my usage, there's just no way at all I'll see anything less than a doubling of my cell phone plan.
For the unitiated, Verizon Wireless now sells its "Share Everything" plan almost exclusively. To use Share Everything, you need to pay monthly for each device that will be connecting to the network. Smartphones are $40, tethering devices are $10, and other types of devices have different costs. After that, you need to buy an amount of data that your devices will all share for the month. I use about 5 gigs of data in an average month, and that number has gone up since my recent move. The pricing on these data plans is as follows:
- 500MB: $40
- 1GB: $50
- 2GB: $60
- 4GB: $60
- 6GB: $80
- 8GB: $90
The 500 megabyte tier is new, something that Verizon Wireless has recently bestowed upon the world in their infinite wisdom that not everybody is willing to pay double what they previously were.
I'll go on record as saying that after the discount I get from my employer, I pay anywhere between $78 and $84 each month, just depending on the exact fees and taxes being levied at any given time. I would probably pay between $83 and $90 if I didn't have the employee discount, it's not particularly significant.
If I only connect one device and choose the 6 gigabyte plan, I'm not quite paying double (200%) of what I was before, but I am definitely paying 150% of my previous rate. I have a problem believing that the new pricing on Verizon (and AT&T's pricing is nearly identical) is actually a reflection on what it costs to provide this service.
Verizon has always been one of the more expensive networks, and for a long time I truly believed that I was getting value for my money in the form of a really epic coverage area and consistent (if not always the "fastest") service all around the town, and the state and other parts of the country. However, friends and colleagues using other networks report that those providers are rapidly getting better here in town, and let's be honest: it's not like I leave town too often, or if I do, like I leave it without other people.
It has been suggested that I may be able to keep my plan and rate if I buy a new device off contract, however there's no provision for a break in pricing based on buying devices outright, and a question remains of whether or not I'm using the service heavily enough to justify the price I'm paying now. And there's always the risk that even if I do buy a device off contract, some automated process will switch me over to a new pricing scheme anyway. And let's be honest, it's no longer a universal truth that Verizon has all of the devices, or even the most compelling devices.
My contract ends within a month of this posting and in a move that probably surprises nobody these days, I'm very seriously considering going with one of the smaller and seemingly friendlier carriers. T-Mobile has prepay plans as low as $30/mo featuring high amounts of fast data access, and Sprint has a plan that lines up with what I'm getting now for about $70. T-Mobile even has an affordable Windows Phone 8 device which I could use from now to the time