"Share Everything" Plan Should You Buy?

As always is the case when mobile retail service plans are revamped in major ways, each account owner, and customers of other service providers, will have to do a bit of work to figure out whether the new plans are better than the existing plans any user is buying.

As always, the answer is that whether the new plans are better, roughly the same, or worse, for any given customer depends on how users on any account want to use mobile services.

For some Verizon customers who don’t use all their voice minutes and text allowance, the new plans, featuring unlimited domestic calling and texting, might not actually offer any new value, except theoretically. Such users might even pay slightly more.

Heavy voice or texting users might like the plans, and might save a bit of money.

Heavy data users might pay measurably more, but also can buy plans that match their usage.

If shared data plans have similar market impact to family voice and texting plans, the decision context will change. The big decisions will not be "choosing a new plan" for the same services and devices, but "adding new devices to the account" and "upgrading feature phones to smart phones." Those decisions, it is true, will increase recurring bills, but mainly because adding incremental new devices costs less than it would have in the past.

In all likelihood, that was part of Verizon Wireless thinking all along. To the extent possible, the new plans would aim to be revenue neutral for customers who do not plan to change the number of devices on any single account, or upgrade devices from feature phones to smart phones.

For accounts where the incremental costs now are more attractive, the decisions will more likely hinge on whether it now makes sense to spend a little more, to get more.