If you’re a Verizon customer who was grandfathered into an unlimited data plan, and you use “extraordinary” amounts of data, you might want to get ready to pay more for less data, or perhaps consider another carrier. Verizon is set to push its heaviest data users into a data capped plan, or face losing their service.
Starting Thursday, the carrier will be sending out notifications to people consuming “extraordinary” amounts of data, according to Droid Life. The carrier hasn’t defined what it means by “extraordinary,” except that it refers to using amounts “well in excess” of 100 gigabytes on a single device. The carrier’s current 100-gigabyte plan is normally meant to be shared among several people.
Those customers will be forced to switch to a fixed plan by August 31, or face losing their service. There will be a 50-day window in which they can resubscribe, but they won’t have an unlimited data plan available to them.
As data speeds have improved, and data usage has accordingly increased, Verizon and competitor AT&T have both made moves to wean their customers from the unlimited data plans that were once used to draw those same users into their respective folds. To be fair to both wireless carriers, there are users who simply set their mobile devices up as a hotspot and use the connection for all their data needs, video streaming included.
Verizon did recently announce a new set of data plans which in most cases offer a significantly larger amount of data than previous plans, for usually just $5 to $10 more per month, so that might be an option if you’re faced with a decision. Otherwise, if Sprint or T-Mobile have decent service in your area, you might consider them as an option.
