New Verizon plans do away with 2-year contracts and Edge
We’ve got some interesting news today for folks with service through Big Red. The company has announced their new Verizon plans, and are doing away with the old 2-year contracts.
If you’ve owned a cellphone in states sometime in the past 10-years or so, you are probably very, very familiar with 2-year contracts. Verizon has announced their new “XL” plans as a way to simplify things for consumers and in the process, it means there will be no more 2-year stints. As you might suspect, it’s really just a good old smoke & mirrors trick as you’ll be tethered to the company regardless unless you go in unlocked.
With the new plans, you simply need to choose how much data you’d like. The small option gives you 1GB of data for $30, medium is 3GB for $45, Large is $60 for 6GB, and the X-Large package will set you back $80 per month for 12GB of data. All that data is sharable regardless of how many lines you have, and it will be $20 a line per month for smartphones while tablet and jetpack lines will go for $10 per month. Smartwatch lines bring up the rear at $5 per line a month.
What’s that mean for you? Well, if you’re on Big Red you can run out your current contract as-is and figure things out once it expires. If you want to switch plans now or are getting ready to setup service with Verizon, you’ll have to bring your own device, buy one at full price or have the cost of the new smartphone tacked onto your bill. While they announced there are no more 2-year deals (or Verizon Edge), you’ll still have to pay the piper if you want to leave early.
As always, you’ll want to read the fine print once Big Red makes their new plans official, but it’s basically a bit of rewarding and a batch  simplified plans. The new Verizon plans will go live on August 13, which is right in time for the slew of new handsets headed to the carrier.
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2 thoughts on “New Verizon plans do away with 2-year contracts and Edge”
exactly why I don’t have a cell phone. the billing process is terrible, a call breaks up and the pricing is far out of reach, esp. for those of us on fixed incomes. I’ll keep my good, old reliable land-line. I can hear clearly, it never breaks up (unless someone with a cell calls me!) and the price is right. I can call anywhere in the country – my landline bill never changes. I have a $10 phone that plugs into a wall jack in case of a storm – it’s never failed. I will also add – cells are anti-social. Try doing some shopping and getting an item – chances are you’ll wait while someone calls home to see if that’s the item they wanted. How about using a pen & list and stop inconveniencing others? Is that call really that important? How about pulling your face away and try interacting with other humans? Tired of getting a door slammed in my face because nobody looks up. If you’re paying that much for a cell, who’s the fool?? I have FiOs – it includes my landline (unlimited calling), internet with 50/50 speed and nearly 2000 TV stations for the basic plan (no HBO, etc) for less than what you bozos are paying for a lousy cell.
That’s a serious chip you’ve got on your shoulder there… Landlines (traditional ones) do have benefits. Most notably not needing electricity to run unless you have extra gizmos attached, but your FiOS digital phone service is not a traditional landline, and so is susceptible to power outages unless you purchase an expensive UPS. However, a lot of people prefer the convenience of a phone they can use anywhere. Nowadays it goes even further of being a personal computer they can use anywhere.
Nearly all carriers no longer limit calling minutes or SMS anymore since there are so many alternatives that the cell companies were not making enough profit from overages. You wouldn’t know about this, though, because even in an article about contracts and billing, you are focusing on social issues while claiming that Verizon FiOS is cheaper than a cell phone bill, apparently having done absolutely no research on the subject. All cell carriers have no long distance charges, and some even allow international calls to certain countries free. Can your landline do that? Didn’t think so. I can, if I wanted, get a cell phone for less than $100 (one time cost) and pay $15 per month for service with a regional carrier. You’re telling me your FiOS phone, TV, and 50/50 internet bundle is less than $15? Funny, because FiOS is considered by many to be one of the worst deals in telecommunications, second only to Comcast Xfinity, so who’s the “bozo” here?
Moving on…
The world is a big place, so sometimes a video call is the best thing that some of us can muster to bona-fide “human interaction” with our families. Not all of us want to live 10+ generations in the same exact town and never grow and evolve as human beings. Not everyone can afford a computer with a webcam, but a cell phone has much more utility and typically costs less.
You say anti-social, but I really think you meant NON-social, and only because people were not paying attention to you. Anti-social behaviour are actions that deliberately attempt to disrupt social order, such as a person punching another person that tried to shake his/her hand. A few people on phones are rather non-social, preferring to have their faces glued to a tiny screen literally every waking moment, but that is a vast minority of the modern cell-phone-using world. The rest of us still interact just fine, except with bitter people that chastise us for adapting to modern technology.
Not to mention, checking online if I can buy something for less elsewhere is just called being smart with money. I can check prices, but I can also put my shopping list on a smartphone, and it will remind me as I leave work to pick up milk. For those of us that are forgetful withOUT a cell phone, it really saves time and money. Did the husband/wife want 2% or whole milk? I just wrote down “milk” on my list… Hmmm… I guess for someone like you, you just buy whatever and hope for the best!
Next, cell service “breaks up” a lot less than depending on the area. It’s not like the early days of mobile phones on an analog signal that had horrible interference issues. I can personally say that I have have dropped only a handful of phone calls on a cell phone, and every single one of them was in a place no one should be making a phone call, such as inside a Faraday Cage. Your digital landline would have had issues there too, by the way.
About the only legitimate point you have made that was not just you being bitter was about the billing, but you have missed the problem with cellular billing entirely. My cell phone bill never changes either, but I also had to research the fine print, which leads to the real problem: The issue is really that cell companies are some of the most unethical businesses in existence. They charge “overages” on data and “throttle” users to make sure “all users have access”, which is a complete lie. It’s all about profits. They would find people hating on them a lot less if they just came out and were honest for once. Verizon Telecommunications, whom provides you FiOS, has the same business practices as it’s child company, Verizon Wireless, the article about whom you commented. Fair play to you.