Visible has made some major changes today. Visible is now offering two unlimited plans, one priced at $30/month and the other at $45/month with no other discounts available. Visible's Party Pay program that offered discounts to consumers by lowering their bill to $25/month when they joined groups of four or more other Visible customers has been eliminated. However, current customers on a legacy plan will be grandfathered into their Party Pay rates. Thanks to Jeff Moore, Principal of Wave7 Research for the tip on the changes.
Update: According to a Reddit post, Party Pay will discounts will be going away on 1/1/23 and the grandfathering will end then. But current customers that switch to a new plan will lose their Party Pay discounts and can't revert back and get them.
Update: A Visible employee added the following statement to the Reddit thread:
So make of the conflicting statements of the grandfathering of the legacy plan what you will.
Visible also seems to have borrowed a tagline from Consumer Cellular and part of its website now touts that Visible has "Everything you need, nothing you don't."
Visible's New Base Plan Starts At $30/Month
Visible's new base plan seems to offer most of the same features that Visible has always offered but now it's priced at $30/month instead of $40 for customers who signed up to Visible without using Party Pay or $25/month for those that did. It includes unlimited talk, text, and data with data speeds prioritized below other customers during times that the network is experiencing heavy traffic. That means data speeds will be temporarily slowed when the network is congested.
The plan also includes unlimited mobile hotspot with data speeds capped at 5Mbps and only one device can be connected to the hotspot at a time.
Finally, the $30 plan also includes unlimited talk and text to Mexico and Canada plus spam and robocall blocking.
This plan has access to Verizon's 4G LTE and 5G nationwide networks. It no longer has access to Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband network.
Visible's $45 Plan Adds Premium Data
Visible's new $45 plan adds several extra features over the $30 plan. Most notably, customers now get at least 50GB of premium data every billing cycle. That means customers that use more than 50GB of high-speed data during a billing cycle will have their data speeds temporarily slowed when the network is busy with a lot of traffic. However, customers who connect to Verizon's Ultra Wideband network will have unlimited premium data that never slows based on the amount of data you use.
The $45 plan also adds over the $30 plan talk, text, and data roaming while traveling in either Canada or Mexico. International calling from the US to over 30 countries and free international texting from the US to over 200 countries are also additional features over the $30 plan. The rest of the plan's features are the same as the $30 plan including hotspot limited to 5Mbps and 1 device being able to connect to it at a time.
Both plans still include all-in pricing with no additional taxes or fees. Smartwatches can still be added to each plan for an additional $5/month.
Visible's website has been updated to show the locations where Ultra Wideband is available with a coverage map showing the difference between its two plans.
Visible's new pricing model should be viewed as an overall minimum of a $5/month price hike. And if you're a family of four, you are now paying $120/month for Visible's service instead of $100.
Update: To take advantage of the updated plans and the features they may provide, you will need to get a new SIM card from Visible. Both of Visible's updated plans will include extended roaming coverage for better coverage in rural areas. The network experience overall should also be improved. You can check out Visible's FAQs for more information.
Visible's new premium plan now matches the pricing of the prepaid unlimited base plans that Verizon offers through its Tracfone brands including Straight Talk wireless and Total Wireless among others. The new premium plan may still be a welcomed change for some Visible customers and those that previously left the brand. A common complaint with some Visible customers has centered around quality of service issues caused by extremely slowed data speeds due to network congestion and Visible's network being routed through a limited number of cloud servers.
Jeff Moore, Principal of Wave7 Research added: "This is a big change for Visible, moving away from the heavily marketed $25/month Party Pay price point. It's possible that Visible sensed that discounts for virtual 'families' were unwieldy and challenging. This approach is simpler, but more expensive."