Please...

[ANDREW0527]

Bring back unlimited data.

Seems kind of ironic to sell these super smartphones only for them to cap @ 4g?!!! LOL

4g's covers about a week of pandora @ work.

This is a joke.

Thank you.

[Big_D_Docking_Dude]

Do you have wifi where you work?

[ttipgem]

There's no "cap".

You can purchase more data allowance.

Doubtful that "unlimited" is ever coming back for the very reason stated in the OP.

[Tidbits]

It'll come back. The problem is... The amount of growth wasn't planned for. In less than 2 years data usage grew 4 fold. Now the backbone needs to get faster and updated. So they have to plan for this data increase and then some more. LTEA will help with aggregate demand, and better prioritizing. Probably won't see it until 2017-18 at the earliest. The smaller carriers are not as saturated and I am willing to bet if the roles were flipped the smaller carriers would drop unlimited themselves. To update the network takes more than overnight.

Also carriers don't own the backbones. They pay out in tiers from landline providers(where they don't have their landlines of their own). They pay out overages. This is why Sprint themselves says it isn't sustainable yet offer unlimited. If they gained 50M customers they'd change their plans.

[rcschnoor]

Tidbits wrote:

It'll come back.

I agree, somewhat. I believe it will either come back at an increased price from $30/month OR the cost/GB on the metered data plans will drop significantly. Hopefully if/when it comes back Verizon will not discontinue shared data plans.

The problem is that you have 2 types of users. Those on single plan who don't want to have a shared data plan with other users AND those who have multiple lines who find it ridiculous to pay for an individual data plan on each of their multiple lines. Verizon needs to allow you to choose which type of plan you would prefer!

[Tidbits]

If they are going to charge $40 per smartphone I expect the data if unlimited to be at least $50.  We just have to wait and see.

[rcschnoor]

I won't be so bold to predict a price EXCEPT that it will be higher than $30/month.

[#8]

Tidbits wrote:

It'll come back.

Sure once AWS is rolled out everywhere and LTE-A is rolled out. And Verizon acquires and rolls out any 600 MHz spectrum they win in those auction( auctions scheduled for 2015 ) adds mini towers( currently less than 10% of areas have these ) and converts both 3G and 1X spectrum to LTE( currently planed for 2021 ). So sure unlimited data might come back but not for at least 7 years.

[#9]

Tidbits wrote:

If they are going to charge $40 per smartphone I expect the data if unlimited to be at least $50.  We just have to wait and see.

They charge $325 for 50 GB currently. 50 GB is certainly a lot less than unlimited. The thing is you can tether for free on share everything plans. Now if I had unlimited data for $50 you bet I'd cancel my cable internet tomorrow. Why would I need it? Now imagine millions of people using Verizon LTE as their main internet and using hundreds of GB a month as I do? Sorry the network can not handle it now and probably never will. I see caps after Verizon kills off unlimited data for everyone this summer. Once Verizon knows there aren't any customers that are going to use 500 GB, 700 GB to 1 TB of data in a month they can safely raise the caps for everyone. I also suspect they'll raise them again once AWS is rolled out everywhere and sigificant part of their customer base has AWS enabled phones.

[#10]

ttipgem wrote:

There's no "cap".

You can purchase more data allowance.

Doubtful that "unlimited" is ever coming back for the very reason stated in the OP.

If it came back people like the OP would use it that way and the network would slow down to a crawl if one could even access it then people like the OP will be back mad asking "Why is my connection so slow". Apparently mobile internet is magical and works on pixie dust and unicorn blood. With unlimited data why bother to see if apps are constantly updating unnecessarily or constantly running in the background? You know things that will affect the network. Hey let's let my Pandora run all night even why I'm sleeping, I have unlimited data. Who cares if I'm wasting bandwidth.