Verizon adds a third 'unlimited' plan in the name of choice
For Verizon, "unlimited" is getting more complicated.
A new unlimited tier, Above Unlimited, is joining the current two tiers -- Go Unlimited and Beyond Unlimited. Verizon says the whole point is to give consumers more choice, but the new tier also could make things more confusing.
The carrier first reintroduced an Unlimited plan in February 2017, then split them into two tiers, Go and Beyond, in August that year. You could say it ignited competition, as T-Mobile matched and topped Verizon's offering. And since then Verizon has introduced unlimited prepaid and business plans.
So how do Verizon's unlimited plans differ from each other? They're summarized in the table below.
Ronan Dunne, the president of Verizon's wireless division, told Mashable, "We always had the intent of evolving and expanding the offering. And [Above Unlimited] specifically is in response to customer and consumer insight and feedback."
The Go or Beyond tiers are staying the same. The core difference is that with Above Unlimited you use up 75GB of data before the network will "de-prioritize your access and temporally slow down your data if you're in a congested area. On Beyond, this happens after you hit a cap of 22GB and on Go, there's no cap, strangely.
So why are these plans called "unlimited" when there are clear limitations imposed? Your guess is as good as ours.
The core advantage with Above Unlimited larger 75GB data cap before throttling can occur. You can also use your phone as a hotspot for up to 20GB of data at LTE speeds, and you get 500GB in Verizon Cloud storage.
Verizon will allow you to mix and match the different tiers for each line on an account. For instance, if you had a family of four on Verizon, you could put mom and dad on Go Unlimited, but daughter and son could be on Beyond or Above if they are avid streamers.
Verizon is the only carrier offering this segmentation in this style on a plan, but T-Mobile has a similar offering with its One Plus plan (not to be confused with OnePlus, the Chinese phone manufacturer).
Verizon Above Unlimited becomes available on June 18th.
Correction: When Verizon introduced unlimited plans in February 2017, there was only one plan, and the Go/Beyond split came in August of that year.
Topics Verizon
