The scan above purports to show a Verizon customer brochure that will appear in stores next Thursday, revealing nothing beyond the detailed leaks we’ve already reported but at least providing some reassuringly crinkled corroboration of the salient details. New customers will barred from the happy land of unlimited data, and will instead have to cough up tiered monthly fees ranging from $10 for 75MB up to $80 for 10GB, plus an extra $20 for tethering rights. In a separate turn to this tale, we hear that customers who want to tether to a 4G handset will have to pay $30 per month to keep Big Red happy. This might come as a shock if you’ve been living it up on the free tethering offer that ends next week, but we had a strong inkling it was coming. Besides, it’s not all bad: those 30 bucks will get you unlimited data on the fastest LTE network around, whereas the $20 crew must make do with a mere 2GB monthly.
If you’re not one of the thousands and thousands of world citizens that have subscribed to the idea that you need a smartphone to function normally in society, you undoubtedly have you reasons. Cost is of course prohibitive, and some people just don’t see the need (weird!), but I’d wager to guess one of the most giant reasons people do not seek to further their understanding of this new handheld device world is the fact that they’re confused about data costs. Verizon today seeks to change your mind with an easy-to-read fact sheet.
What this fact sheet appears to be is a response to last year’s FCC fiasco for Verizon in which they were investigated on “mystery fees” billed to 15 million users of their services. Verizon’s sheet (pictured above and below) is being sent out to subscribers who use their “pay as you go” data plans. One side of the sheet is title “Understanding your Data Charges” and shows all the ways a user can get charged for data usage, including downloading apps, mobile web surfing, using apps that regularly update themselves or your info, browsing online application stores, and more. It also shows the maniacal price of Verizon’s pay as you go plan ($1.99 per megabyte) and shows its tools for tracking said data usage.
The other side of the sheet lists 15 Verizon apps often/always installed on Verizon-purchased smartphones including V Cast Music, which has no charges outside of its SONG ID feature, and Verizon’s ESPN MVP app and VZ Navigator GPS app that don’t use bandwidth for use but do for upgrades. Email, in contrast, uses data no matter what you’re doing with it.
This move comes right on top of AT&T receiving a heavy charge insinuating it’s been overcharging for iPhone and iPad data. Verizon spokeswoman Debi Lewis told Forbes today that these sheets did indeed find themselves born out of the “mystery fees” case last year, the case resulting in Verizon singing a consent decree noting how transparent they had to be in the future.
These sheets, in combination with free text message updates on data usage as well as a dedicated section inside it’s user homepage “My Verizon,” are meant to deter themselves from ever making as costly a mistake as was made last year. The case with the FCC last year cost Verizon a $25 million dollar fine as well as a $52.8 million dollar refund to customers.
Is this sheet, that site, and the text messages enough? Or is Verizon (and not to mention every other carrier with smartphones) bound to repeat a history of pain?* *History of Pain would be an amazing name for Slayer’s next album. You hear me Slayer?!
Click the thumbnail in the gallery below to see the Verizon sheet larger.
You can call it a Valentine’s sale or a pre-iPhone 4 blow out, but any way you slice it there’s some pretty good deals on Android phones available from Verizon right now. That includes the Samsung Fascinate and Continuum, as well as the HTC Droid Incredible and Motorola Droid R2-D2, which are all now available for just $100 on the usual two-year contract (the Fascinate deal is apparently today-only). Unfortunately, the sale doesn’t include the Droid X, Droid Pro or Droid 2 Global, but Verizon is promising some additional one-day only sales during its “ten days of sweet deals” from now until February 10th, so folks interested in one of those might not be out of luck just yet.
Though it was predated by a usable hack, the Pantech UML290 USB modem — one of just two devices launched so far for Verizon’s LTE network — has finally been blessed with an official Mac OS driver. What does this mean? Well, technically, it means that this is the very first time Mac users are getting any LTE love in the US whatsoever — though with that Samsung-sourced mobile hotspot on the horizon, USB modems might be a tough sale at this point. On a bright note, the availability of the driver today means that Verizon beat its own estimate of February; the UML290′s counterpart from LG, the VL600, is still Windows-only, though we imagine that’ll be hitting soon as well.
We won’t lie: we’ve been pretty skeptical of the rumors so far that the HTC Thunderbolt would have support for simultaneous voice and data over EV-DO — SVDO, as it’s known — turned on. Perhaps more than any other US carrier, Verizon has a reputation for testing the living daylights out of devices and locking out hardware that doesn’t meet its reliability standards, and so we were a little leery of some supposedly leaked internal communication not long ago letting reps know that although it’ll be enabled, it shouldn’t be discussed because it doesn’t offer an “experience… consistent with [their] brand.” Well, we’ve just been fed a second document that features the same wording, so it looks like this might be real after all — and what’s more, it’s got updated verbiage stating that mobile hotspot capability will be available at launch, contrary to other leaks floating around today. This particular document is dated today, so we’re feeling good that the information is current — and if anything, it should get potential Thunderbolt buyers more excited than ever.
The HTC Thunderbolt may have been officially announced way back at CES, but there’s still quite a bit we don’t know about the phone — namely, a price or a release date. We now at least have what looks to be a fairly solid hint of the latter, however, courtesy of the above shot of a Best Buy inventory screen that lists an in stock date of February 14th. You’ll note that the screen doesn’t actually mention the HTC Thunderbolt anywhere, but some sleuthing by the folks at Android Central reveals that the product code matches one found on a Thunderbolt box that turned up in a recent hands-on video. Joining that rumor is a separate one from Droid Life, which has obtained some supposedly authentic Verizon materials that suggest the Thunderbolt won’t be shipping with mobile hotspot functionality enabled at launch, and that Skype video chat won’t be enabled initially either. No word on a reason for the delay (if there actually is one), but both features will seemingly be enabled at some point, and there will apparently be a placeholder icon in the case of Skype that will display a “coming soon” message if it’s launched.
The last Palm-branded holdout on Verizon’s inventory — the CDMA Pixi Plus — is now gone from the company’s online store, once again leaving the country’s largest carrier without a webOS option to be had. Of course, the Pre 2 has been lined up for release on Verizon for some time, but in light of the lukewarm reception the phone’s received so far, the coming webOS 2.0 upgrades for the older models, and the big news presumably coming out of HP’s early February event, we’d say they’re now dangerously close to releasing an obsolete device. For what it’s worth, Palm’s site insists that the new model’s still “coming soon,” but that had better happen on the double if they want to sell any of these things.
That rumor yesterday about Verizon dumping rebates on smartphones priced $150 or greater? Yep, it’s looking more legit than ever now that BGR‘s scored Big Red’s latest rebate form — and nearly all of the big-ticket smartphones are now gone. Also notable: the Droid 2 R2-D2, currently priced at $199.99, is on there with a $50 rebate, which suggests the phone could see a price drop to $149.99 on or around Monday. At the end of the day, you’ll be paying the same for most of these phones — but it’ll be nice to pay a little less upfront.
The grapevine did already hint at the timing of the Verizon iPhone 4 pre-orders, but now, to be absolutely sure nobody misses them, we have a countdown! Eager iPhone bandwagon jumpers will have to stay up till 3AM EST on February 3rd to get their orders in from a “reserved quantity” of handsets, which will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis — presumably to be delivered on that February 10th launch date everyone’s been anticipating for so long. Sadly for Verizon newcomers, a contract with the network will be a prerequisite for signing up when the countdown expires.
Seriously, Continuum owners, you couldn’t have possibly thought you dodged this bullet, right? Big Red’s pushing an update today that’s kind of a double-edged sword; on the one hand, you get a boatload of bug fixes to visual voicemail, messaging, WeatherBug, and more. But on the other hand, the update will automatically install V CAST Apps, Verizon’s app store, whether you like it or not. We’d like the option of choosing an update either with or without additional software on carrier-branded phones these days — but we suppose we can understand the complexities of forking updates like that. At any rate, this one’s over the air, so expect a notification from Verizon on your phone shortly.
