Well FINALLY, you asked for it, you got it: Pooled data plans!
Be careful what you ask for!
Recently, I met with one of our customers and he mentioned how great he thought the new unlimited plans from Verizon were better than the old because they upped the minimum number of users on the plans from 5 to 10 (this is for his personal plans, but the same idea, I am certain will apply to business plans as well).
However, what he did not realize is some of the minimums have gone from $9 per add-on device on the old plans to $30 per add-on user (and that is the lowest add-on price; others go up from there to a max of $45 per add-on user). Can you say CHA-CHING..yikes! (check out the math below)
Let’s look at the details:
First, SHARE everything means sharing, but not with unlimited resources. You can share, but only so much. Keep in mind this is UNLIMITED Talk, UNLIMITED Text and SHAREABLE data. People see this and get the idea that all things are UNLIMITED; they are not. A really good thorough article can be found to compare ATT and Verizon plans here: http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/18/atandt-and-verizon-shared-data-plans-compared/
Second, let’s run the math:
Given: Typical data users are using about 350 KB per month.
Under the OLD plans, each user would have a primary line that would handle the voice, usually about $45 per month that would give about 450 minutes to share, then each additional family share user would be charged about $9.99 per additional voice user to share those roughly 450 minutes. Then each user would need to purchase their own data plans, usually around $25-$30 for 2GB of data with limits of 5 users per account.
Text messaging was offered at roughly $5 per user broken out in different ways. Thus, on average the old users would spend about $400 per month on fees with 5 users and $800 per month with 10 users.
Under the new plans, each user has a fee (here about $110 for the primary fee) then a $30, $40 (or associated) rates for EACH additional smartphone.
Finally, the results are pretty clear: the old way was significantly less expensive than the new IMPROVED POOLED data plans. Ain’t carrier improvements grand?