After yesterday’s news that Verizon’s new Share Everything data plans would arrive by June 28, we dove into every nook and cranny of them to try and help you understand this drastic change in wireless carrier service. We talked about keeping unlimited data, pre-ordering the Galaxy S3, corporate discounts under the new structure, and even tossed together a step-by-step guide to help you decide if you would save money or not by switching off of your current plan. Since there was a ton of info out there, we thought we’d throw it together for you in one post for quick reference.
- Share Everything Basics: This is our step-by-step guide to help you figure out how much money you would spend if you were to switch to a shared data plan. From what we have gathered over the last day and a half, these plans seem like they will benefit those that talk on the phone a lot and send thousands of text messages every month, but may not be the best thing for anyone who uses more than 2GB of data per month.
- You Can Keep Unlimited Data: Verizon told us a couple of weeks ago that you can keep your unlimited data plan even after they launch shared data and they weren’t lying. You can keep it, however, you will never be able to buy a subsidized/discounted phone again. If you want to keep your current plan, you will have to buy phones at full retail price.
- Will You Save Any Money?: We asked the DL community to take their current plan and calculate their bill as if they had switched over to a Share Everything plan to see if they would save money, spend more per month, or keep a similar bill. About 75% of you said that you would be paying more under Verizon’s incoming shared data plans, 17% will save money, and 8% will keep a similar bill.
- Corporate Discounts and Tablets: A source of ours shared the new policy on corporate discounts, which now includes only a discount on your data plan (which is account level) and not your individual line. If you had a $40 line access fee and a $70 2GB data plan, you would only see a discount off of that $70. Verizon has also decided to eliminate discounts from tablets, which makes sense since you can no longer buy them on contract.
- Guide to Share Everything: Here is a full guide to Share Everything plans, one that includes almost every single detail you could ever need to know.
- Galaxy SIII Pre-orders: Yes, you can pre-order the Galaxy SIII and keep your unlimited data plan. You need to do it before June 28 though, or you will be out of luck. Also, you may want to be careful pre-ordering through Best Buy, as their process is much different than Verizon’s.
The last question that we are seeking an answer on has to do with accounts that have multiple lines and upgrades at different times. What would happen if one of those lines uses an upgrade with Share Everything live? Does that force the entire account onto Share Everything or will just that single line move onto it? We have this question into Verizon already and are hoping to have something official back soon. Stay with us.
Other than that, do you feel like you have a better understanding of Share Everything? If not, be sure to drop your questions in the comments.
This post was last modified on June 13, 2012 8:46 am