Verizon’s Share Everything Plans Announced And They’re Not So Family Friendly

Vincent Messina (6:27 am PDT, Jun 12th 2012)

We’ve been waiting for this moment, and now that it’s here, I wish is sort of never arrived. Verizon has unveiled their Share Everything data plans, and to my dismay, they aren’t very family friendly. The new plans package unlimited voice, text, and data across up to ten tablets, laptops, modems, and phones. You pay a flat price for each individual device you add to the plan as well as one flat price for a specific amount of data to be shared by these devices.

I’m very perplexed by these new plans as I thought they were meant to ease the pain of the high expenses incurred by having multiple devices, all of which are required to have data plans. If I were to switch to the new Shared Everthing plan that Verizon is so kindly offering, I’d actually have to pay more!

I currently pay $80 for my plan, $30 for my unlimited data, $30 for my wife’s unlimited data, $10 for her phone on the family plan and $10 for my daughters phone (dumb phone) on the family plan. So that’s:

$80 + $30 + $30 + $10 + $10 = $160

If I switch to the money saving Shared Everything plan, I will have to pay $40 for my phone, $40 for my wife’s phone, $30 for my daughters phone, and then $70 for 4GB of data (about what me and my wife use). That’s:

$40 + $40 + $30 + $70 = $180

I get to pay $20 more and lose my unlimited data!?

Now to be fair, I don’t have unlimited talk and text on my current plan. We share 1400 minutes but thanks to features like Friends and Family, we barely use 1000 minutes a month. Then there’s the texting. While I don’t use text, my wife and daughter do and that’s something like an extra $15 so that still brings my bill to $5 less than what it would be on a Shared Everything. Where’s the savings?

The new Shared Everything plan may work out for some of you, but I don’t see it saving any families with multiple smartphone’s much of anything.

Take a look at these new plans versus your current plan and let us know if you’d be saving any money by switching and if so, how much?

Source Verizon

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http://twitter.com/LegacyRyan Legacy Consulting
Line 1: iPhone on 1400 plan with unlimited messaging at 99.99 plus $30 for unlimited data is $130.Line 2: iPhone add-a-line $9.99 plus $30 for 2GB data is $40Line 3: Mobile Hotspot $50 for 5GB dataTotal: $220 before all of the taxes and crap…New Plan:$100 for 10GB data$40 for iphone$40 for iphone$20 for hotspotTotal: $200Am I missing something??? Seems like I will get more data than I cuttingly have and use, plus unlimited calling and the mobile hotspot feature for my other iPhones. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Barry Loy
I also did the math, and the calculator on Verizon website, and it appears we would pay a little more as well. The big plus for us would be that mobile hotspot is included with the $40 smartphone monthly access. This would be nice because I could now get my wifi iPad access while on vacation or my laptop. The big downfall with the new costs is the regular phone costs of $30. We had thought about adding a regular phone to have around the house for $9.99 current prices, but I would never even consider it for $30.
bartonlynch
Crazy prices for single customers
joewaylo
It may not seem right, but it is cost saving though. Minus the fact you lose unlimited data and many users go up to 10GBs or even 50GBs.
Say like myself. I pay $80 a month for the minimum charges on AT&T. 2GB Data, No Texts, 450 Voice. That’s $320 a month for everyone on the same plan of four members. Verizon I think would be another $80 ($400).
Channel through the numbers there, that is a cost saving alternative if everyone’s a smartphone user. $100+40+40+40+40. $260. Minus $10 for the wife. She might not be much of a smartphone user if she just calls and texts people.
That’s a total savings of $140.
http://twitter.com/myz06vette Mike Beauchamp
Actually, for us, this is a wash on price, but we gain unlimited minutes.
2 dumb phones + 3 smart phones would look like this:
$30 + $30 + $40 + $40 + $40 = $180
Add 8gb of data to share + $90
Bill = $270
We pay ~$270 now (before tax) for 1400 shared minutes on a plan that looks like this:
$120 – 1400 minute family plan for 2 lines w/ unlimited text
$60 – ($19.95 x 3 extra lines, total of 5)
$90 – ($29.95 x 3 for data plans on the 3 smartphones)
Bill = $270
Our bill after tax is around $295.
Everybody always gripes about losing their unlimited data, but it’s just the principle for most. I don’t like the idea of not having unlimited data, but when I checked the last 12 months of my usage, I never had a single month over 3gb, and I consider myself a pretty data-hungry user. I wasn’t realizing how much time I spent connected to wifi.
I like the idea of this plan – I think – because if we need an extra 2 gigs, from 8gb to 10gb, it’s only another $10 bucks. Also, we gain unlimited minutes. 1400 is usually enough with friends and family, but we’ve gone over twice in the last 12 months. The first time got us for around $40 bucks and the second time was about $50. If you do the math – that $90 in overages I paid for voice minutes would get me 9 months of the 10gb shared data plan, which historically, we wouldn’t use all of anyway.
I think I’m okay with this. But, as you describe in your example, I can see it not working out for everyone. But then again, this is a cellular phone company we’re talking about. Nothing they do is going to work out for everyone. They’re just trying to please the most amount of people. I’m betting they have some well-paid analysts looking at the data and saying this makes sense for most. They can afford to give away more voice minutes, which are cheaper for carriers than data. People just like the idea of knowing they have “unlimited” something, even if it’s completely unreasonable that they would need it. There’s only so many hours in a day, and so many days in a billing period…
Example: There are 43,200 minutes in a month (24x60x30). If you offer people a plan with 45,000 minutes (impossible to consume all, since there aren’t that many minutes in a month) and a plan with unlimited minutes for $10 more, how many do you think would opt for the unlimited? Let’s say 5% of customers, even though I think it’d probably be a lot more. 5% of 100 million subscribers is 5 million people paying an extra $10 bucks for something called “unlimited” when the lesser option, 45,000 minutes, is actually “unlimited”, but has a quantitative, specific “limit”. Now they’ve just made an extra $600 million a year ($50M a month) off of the word “unlimited”.
Get over your fears of losing your “unlimited” data plan. Look at your last 12 months of historical usage, add a little bit of a cushion, and go. If you’re really using substantially more than most and you really do need that much more, well, you should pay more. That’s how everything else in our world is, anyway. The more you use/have/possess, the more you pay.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/NHXNKFQCG7P6RWKX33HBDRBTNU cpip2010
  Dude, you rock!!
VinMessina
After reading some of the comments, it appears to be a decent deal as long as you don’t have any “dumb phones” on your line. I’m guessing this is part of Verizon’s plan to get everyone onto a smartphone and consuming data.
erinsdad
Rejected Photo Caption – “Is that your Android moving around?”
Kevin Gault
Based on my current plan which is 450 minutes nationwide, unlimited text and unlimited data at $103/month with the new plan structure I will get bumped to roughly $110 using the 4gb. I use between 3-4 gb month so that fits but then my bill is jumping $7. I’d like Verizon to explain how I’m saving money. Sounds more like them making more money.
Derail Doax
I don’t mean to belittle, but did you(author) actually think Verizon was doing the data sharing plans to save the customer money? That idea is actually laughable to me, and expecting Verizon to take a hit in profit margins seems very naive. Verizon has consistently been the most expensive of all the carriers, which is somewhat understandable being they have the largest network. Which with business in mind makes sense they would charge more because the network costs more to build and maintain. But they’re a company who always posts great profits every quarter. So you know they are good at making money. This plan to switch to data sharing is all about making larger profit margins. That is why I stick to the budget carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile. They never post great profit margins which means they’re selling their product at a low price with very small margins.
This is the same reason why I never buy Apple products, once I heard that iPhones have a 70% profit margin I want to smash them as soon as I see them. The idea that people are willing to pay a 70% profit margin for a product is a great example of “a fool and his money are soon parted.”
- Joseph Pollone
  On a similar note, I just spent $50 on a sushi dinner for myself. I wasn’t aware of the restaurant’s profit margin for slabs of raw fish, but it was delicious. I’m sure there were other lower profit margin options at nearby restaurants, like a Big Mac, but I chose to enjoy the experience.
  - http://twitter.com/Krans24 Keane Santos
    I don’t disagree with the point you’re making, for some products high profit margin is expected but your analogy for sushi is a pretty shitty one. You do not make 70% profit margin on sushi, it’s very expensive, one Mirugai (giant clam) is over $100, bluefin tuna is highly expensive as well, unless you’re talking about california rolls or something like that.
http://twitter.com/mikerussell Mike Russell
I’m going to stick with my prepaid plan. I only pay $35-40 a month for 2 smartphones– minutes, texts, and data. Of course, I don’t download videos and I am using a 2G data network, but I’m willing to sacrifice videos and download speed for an extra $120 in my pocket each month.

About the author

Vincent Messina has been writing and evangelizing about Android for the past three years. When he's not playing the part of "Loki" to his 5 and 4-year-old, he can be found here, covering all things Android. He adamantly believes Android has the greatest community around and can be harassed at any of the following locations: Google+, Twitter.

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