"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.

DirecTV Might Deploy Ad-Skipping Technology

DirecTV says it could deploy technology that would enable its millions of subscribers to automatically skip television advertising, Reuters reports. DirecTV probably wouldn't do anything until lawsuits pitting Dish Network against TV broadcasters, over the legality of such practices, are settled in court.

Fox, CBS and NBCUniversal separately have sued Dish Network over its new AutoHop service, which allows consumers to skip television ads. At the same time, Dish has filed its own lawsuit against all four broadcast networks seeking a declaration as to the legality of its new service.

Dish’s "Hopper" is a digital video recorder that allows Dish customers to automatically skip past all the commercials on some prime-time network TV shows. Understandably, the TV networks aren't too happy about that, even if Dish customers might like the feature, and they have sued Dish Network to stop the practice. 


TiVo also had earlier proposed allowing its customers to skip over all commercials, but TiVo disabled the feature after intense opposition from programming networks. 


In a sense, Dish is gambling that the "surgical" approach, allowing users to skip virtually all commercials on broadcast network prime-time programs, will please customers more than it irritates the few affected networks.


Hopper would have faced across the board opposition had it proposed eliminating all commercials from all programming, automatically. 

Mobile and Mobile Payment A Top Issue for Parking Industry

Technology-related innovations account for half of the top ten trends in the $30 billion parking industry. The single most important trend in parking today is the technological revolution
that is driving the industry, according to the International Parking Institute.

In fact, three of the top five trends identified in a  study focus on technology, including cashless or electronic payment, technologies to improve access control and payment automation, or increased real-time communication of pricing and availability by mobile phone or similar devices.

NCR Enables ATMs that use Mobile Devices and Barcodes

New software from NCR Corporation will allow consumers to initiate cash withdrawals from their banking accounts on mobile devices and then complete those transactions at an ATM by scanning a 2D barcode.

NCR Mobile Cash Withdrawal will make ATM transactions faster and more secure by removing cards and PINs from the process at the ATM. The entire transaction, while the consumer is in front of the ATM, can take less than 10 seconds, according to NCR.

The point is that there are lots of ways to handle the communications function between a mobile device and a transaction terminal. Near field communications is one way, but only one way.

Apple's Passbook Isn't a Wallet, Yet

But Passbook sure looks like a wallet app. Passbook formally aims only to store loyalty, reward or other account information, from retailers that support barcode apps for boarding passes, store cards, and movie tickets, for example.

Of course, you might note that Apple has about 400 million iTunes accounts linked to user credit cards. So everybody recognizes that Apple could become a wallet of its own, with a mobile-enabled payment mechanism, if it chose to do so. For the moment, it seems content to operate a closed loop service for content purchases from its own "stores."

Verizon’s Shared Data Plan is Revenue Neutral for a Single-User Account

New Verizon Wireless shared data plans are designed to encourage uptake of connected tablets and smart phones. The impact on a single-user smart phone account probably will be "revenue neutral" for both Verizon Wireless and any single smart phone account.

And that was intentional, obviously. Ideally, Verizon Wireless would find the new plans provide incentives for group accounts to add smart phone and tablet devices, while not cannibalizing the single-user accounts.

Verizon Wireless seems to have done so. If one compares the existing cost of a single smart phone,   with a $40 a month plan including 450 anytime minutes, $20 for unlimited texts, and $30 for 2GB of data, plus $30 for 2GB of data on a connected tablet, the person who owns both devices is currently paying $120 per month for the two devices.

With a shared plan that bumps them to unlimited minutes and shares the whole 4GB of data between devices, their monthly total also costs $120 a month.

But the more telling analysis is the cost for a user who does not connect his or her tablet to the Verizon network. Using the same plan as above, that "phone only" user spends $90 a month just for the phone account.

Adding the tablet represents an incremental cost of $10 for the access. Assuming that user upgrades the data plan to about $70 a month (4 Gbytes), Verizon gains an incremental $40 in mobile data spending, for an incremental increase of $50 a month for a single-device smart phone account adding one connected tablet. That's a significant increase in recurring revenue.

If the single smart phone user only wants to upgrade the data bucket to use the personal hotspot feature, the incremental revenue is $40 a month. That is serious money if enough users upgrade.

Verizon Wireless: Biggest Change in Consumer Mobile Pricing in 10 Years

In 2011, about 57 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers were enrolled in family plans for voice and texting. In a big move, Verizon Wireless has announced "Share Everything Plans" that Verizon Wireless says "will forever change the way customers purchase wireless services." That probably is not hyperbole, even if some U.S. mobile service providers do not yet agree. 


Share Everything Plans include unlimited voice minutes, unlimited text, video and picture messaging and a single data allowance for up to 10 Verizon Wireless devices.  


In addition, the Mobile Hotspot service on all the devices is included in the Share Everything Plans at no additional charge, Verizon Wireless says.


The Share Everything Plans debut on June 28 and will be available to new, as well as existing, customers who may wish to move to the new plans. 

To get started on a Share Everything Plan, customers first select the devices they want on their accounts. That requires a $40 monthly access fee for smart phones. 


The next step is to choose a plan that includes unlimited minutes, unlimited messages and a shared data allowance that begins at 1 GB for $50.  


Customers adding a tablet on their Share Everything Plans can do so for an additional $10, with no long-term contract requirement. The following matrix shows pricing for an account with several different devices, such as a smartphone, a tablet and a basic phone, billed to the same individual.

Step 1	Step 2
Monthly Line Access (per device)	Shared Minutes	Shared Messages	Shared Data	Monthly Account Access (shared with up to 10 devices)
Smart phones - $40 Basic Phones - $30 Jetpacks/USBs/ Notebooks/Netbooks - $20 Tablets - $10	Unlimited	Unlimited	1 GB	$50
	Unlimited	Unlimited	2 GB	$60
	Unlimited	Unlimited	4 GB	$70
	Unlimited	Unlimited	6 GB	$80
	Unlimited	Unlimited	8 GB	$90
	Unlimited	Unlimited	10 GB	$100