Verizon Prepaid has updated its wireless plans. The provider has made several changes to its plans including lowering starting prices, adding hotspot to its cheaper unlimited plan, adding guaranteed premium data, and the autopay and loyalty discounts have been changed around. A plan with 5GB of high-speed data has been eliminated.
Stetson Doggett of BestPhonePlans.net alerted BestMVNO to the changes.
Many of the changes are easy to miss at first glance, as the data allotments with each plan remain the same. And in a roundabout way that will be explained, prices are still basically the same as they were before.
Autopay Or Loyalty Discount?
One change that Verizon Prepaid has made is that it is now giving customers the opportunity to get the best pricing on its plans right out of the gate, well almost. Customers who enable autopay billing on their accounts will save $10/month on any data-containing plan. However, the discount starts in the customer's second month of service. Customers that don't want to enable autopay billing on their accounts can still save $10/month through the use of loyalty discounts. After 3-months of continued service, customers will receive a $5/month discount on their wireless plans. After 9-months, the loyalty discount will increase to $10/month. Subscribers cannot claim both a customer loyalty discount and an autopay discount.
Previously, Verizon Prepaid offered a $5/month autopay discount in month two and up to $10/month in loyalty discounts after 9 months for a total of $15/month in savings with each plan. But Verizon Prepaid has now updated plans to make them $5/month cheaper to start than they were before. So the end result is that pricing is still the same as before.
Pro Tip: If you don't want to enable autopay billing on your account, you can still get an instant $10/month discount on an unlimited plan by heading over to your local Verizon Prepaid dealer. Verizon Prepaid dealers, and possibly in-store at Walmart, are offering $10/month off of unlimited plans with in-store activation.
Verizon Prepaid Individual Plans, What Has Changed?
15GB Plan
There have only been two changes made to Verizon Prepaid's 15GB plan. One is that its starting price was previously $50/month and now it's $45/month before any discounts are applied. The other change is that customers now get data roaming in Mexico and Canada, with data speeds reduced to 2G for the remainder of the day once more than 0.5GB of data has been consumed in a day.
The rest of the plan's features remain the same. Customers still get unlimited talk and text and roaming in Canada and Mexico. The plan includes unlimited data with data speeds reduced to 2G for the remainder of the billing cycle once more than 15GB of data has been consumed in a cycle. Mobile hotspot usage is allowed. Videos stream at 480p. The plan connects to Verizon's 4G LTE and 5G nationwide network but does not have Ultra Wideband network access.
Unlimited Plan
There have also been just a couple of changes made to Verizon's base unlimited plan. The price now starts at $60/month instead of $65/month before any discounts are applied. The plan now also has unlimited mobile hotspot usage. However, only the first 5GB of hotspot is available at full speeds before throttling to 600Kbps for the rest of the customer's billing cycle. Previously, this plan did not come with any hotspot data.
The rest of the plan's features are the same as before, and include all the same features that are available with the 15GB plan except data is truly unlimited. Data speeds aren't throttled for the rest of the billing cycle after a certain amount of data has been consumed, but they are still temporarily slowed at any time the network is busy with a lot of traffic.
Unlimited Plus Plan
Verizon's Unlimited Plus plan has seen the most changes. The plan now starts at $70/month instead of $75/month before discounts.
The plan now has 50GB of premium high-priority data. This means that data speeds will no longer slow down compared to other customers on the same network when the network is busy until more than 50GB of data is used in a billing cycle. Previously, customers may have seen their data speeds temporarily slow down any time the network was busy.
The plan now includes 25GB of premium hotspot data. After 25GB of hotspot data gets consumed during a billing cycle, hotspot data speeds will be reduced to 3Mbps when connected to Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband network and 600Kbps when connected to Verizon's 4G LTE or 5G Nationwide networks. Previously, customers only got 10GB of hotspot data with the plan before data speeds were reduced. However, under the old plan's structure, customers who were connected to Verizon's Ultra Wideband network got unlimited hotspot data at full speeds.
The last change made to the plan is that it now includes Global Choice at no additional cost for one country per month. That means you can pick one country a month to call from over 220 options and get 180 minutes to call that particular country. Verizon Prepaid claims that this is a $10/month value.
The rest of the plan's features are the same as before and are the same as the base unlimited plan with the exception that customers on Unlimited Plus get 5G Ultra Wideband network access. 5G Ultra Wideband allows for faster data speeds and streaming in 4K UHD instead of 480p. Both unlimited plans still come with a 6-month free trial of Disney+.