Verizon Wireless (VZ) keeps hinting that it will introduce family data plans, and I for one, am all in favor of it. As family plans become more of “the tie that binds” customers to their operators, shared data plans make perfect sense.
Consider my 15-year-old daughter, who wanted nothing more than a new handset for her birthday. Verizon offered nothing in a feature phone that interested her; the closest feature phone that would fit her needs is carried by her younger brother, and you can imagine the scandal that would ensue if she was forced to use the same type of device that her brother did. However, every Verizon Wireless smartphone requires a $30 per-month data plan. She doesn’t need a $360-a-year plan in addition to a $200 birthday present. (Did I mention she doesn’t work?) Our extended family on both sides of the family are all Verizon Wireless users, in part just because of geography so all of us churning to another carrier doesn’t make sense. As it stands today, we are considering dropping her from VZW and adding her to another operator with a cheaper data plan.
Operators, starting with Sprint Nextel Corp./Clearwire Corp. on their WiMAX network, promised innovative billing programs, including one that would allow a certain number of devices to access the Internet over the course of a month. While the number of cool handsets and applications have exploded, and the 3G network can adequately handle much of the content available today, billing innovation is lagging behind.
