“These are not the plans you are looking for,” Verizon seems to say whenever a customer asks for an unlimited data plan. Now the carrier has hired an analyst to carefully craft an article railing against unlimited data plans for its blog. Verizon’s expert of choice — Jack E. Gold, the founder of the analyst firm J. Gold Associates LLC — argues that unlimited data is not only burdensome to the network, but also entirely pointless.
“In most cases, users are very well served by current wireless data plans, and really don’t require more.”
To further his argument, Gold uses the same old excuses carriers have been giving for the past few years to support their decisions to eliminate unlimited data plan options. He claims that overall network performance would suffer if everyone had unlimited data, driving carriers to invest in improving and expanding the network, which would ultimately result in higher bills for customers.
“Nobody likes to think that they are restricted when they access the Internet, and we have grown accustomed to wired Internet access from home or work that doesn’t impose limits,” Gold writes, adding that, “if everyone had unlimited data and used it fully, the performance of the networks would suffer because of bandwidth restrictions and the ‘shared resource’ nature of wireless.”
However, limiting the amount of data customers get doesn’t seem to help network congestion, either. If it did, there wouldn’t be any hold up at peak hours.
The lure of unlimited #wireless #data – is it necessary? @vzwnews @jckgld Read my new blog http://t.co/s7jcDcDof4
— Jack Gold (@jckgld) April 10, 2015
Even though carriers like Verizon routinely post high profits, Gold claims that if the carriers had to improve their networks, they’d have to raise prices to pay for the new infrastructure. Gold also posits that most users really don’t need unlimited data, which may be true, but his further argument that “in most cases, users are very well served by current wireless data plans, and really don’t require more,” appears to be inaccurate, based on data from a recent study.
A Pew Research study that was published at the start of April revealed that about half of mobile users exceed their data caps very often, with 30 percent of users routinely going over their limits. Data overage charges at most carriers, typically cost around $15 per each gigabyte used beyond the plan. For the 10 percent of users who are dependent on their data plans for Internet access, these charges can add up quickly.
Gold dismisses the idea that while unlimited data may not be for all, it could be beneficial for some. At the bottom of the blog post, a Verizon disclaimer says that the views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the company’s views. Verizon nevertheless wasted no time promoting the blog post on Twitter.
Verizon seems intent on convincing users to give up their grandfathered unlimited data plans, and to stay far away from T-Mobile’s latest unlimited data plan offers.
