Wish data allowances could be bigger:
dawg338
Newbie

While I'm not a fan of data allowances, I currently live in an area where the only alternative would be Hughes.net satellite or dial-up, so Verizon Homefusion broadband was the best choice.

Hughes.net gave good speeds but was inconsistant and there was considerable lag for the signal to go up to the satellite and back, so online gaming was out of the question. I cancelled the service after a month and found out about Verizon's option. We had to switch to Verizon on our cell phones due to no other reliable coverage in the area, so at least it is all under the same umbrella now.

One thing I would like to see is the data allowance tiers offering more gigs per month. I had to cancel Netflix because I'm sure it would have ate up most of the allowance. I noticed in Texas (I'm in Ohio.), that Comcast offers 300gb a month option for a decent cost! Of course, that is cable and we're talking the 4G celluar network here, but really with the mass amount of data being pushed through, 10, 20, 30gb is not enough.

Every month I get close to my cap without going over, but I don't stream movies or music or anything, so I have no idea where the data is coming from.

Anyway, I hope that Verizon will either get rid of data allowances altogether (which with laws being drafted now, they may have to), or offer a lot bigger options and not charge an arm and a leg for it.

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Re: Wish data allowances could be bigger:
John_Getzke
Champion - Level 1

Don't bet on that happening any time soon.  HomeFusion already has the most generous data plans that VZW offers.  Unlimited will never come back on a network that has already eliminated it.

The wireless industry benefits greatly on overage charges much like how the phone companies benefit from long distance calling and minutes.  It is a standard part of the business model in this industry that they are going to protect.

Metered data plans certainly are legal and in fact the exact opposite is true in regards to the laws.  On 1/13/14 the US court of appeals ruled that the FCC does not have authority to oversee Net Neutrality on Internet Service Providers.  VZW argued and convinced the court that they are not a "Common Carrier" (Phone company) and thus Net Neutrality does not apply.  That means that Wireless Internet Service Providers like Verizon are allowed to discriminate data however they want over their network.  While you may start seeing exclusive deals cut with major content providers to cover data costs for consumers, the whole basis of the deal is that data is a rare and valuable commodity.  Otherwise a content company has no incentive to strike a deal with VZW for free data in the first place.

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Re: Wish data allowances could be bigger:
dawg338
Newbie

The problem with data caps is it will cause many people to not use the net as much and it will greatly affect services like Netflix. No problem though, I found a competitor that offers broadband over the celluar network with unlimited data if I choose to switch over. When enough people do so, they will have to change their business model or lose customers.

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Re: Wish data allowances could be bigger:
zaktsin
Newbie

in the same boat. im in a area where i can only choose from hughes net, dial up, or verizon's home fusion. satellite internet bytes plus i hate hughes net, we use to have them, they told us once that they only want us to use the internet for checking email, and browsing the internet. If they catch us playing online game, downloading, streaming, or uploading they'll throttle back our speed to only bytes (and they have done that before). so we said *insert language of inappropriate use" to them and canceled it. so im w/ verizon's homefusion. i hate the limit of the data they force on it. all i know the moment i have access to internet w/ the same speeds and i dont have to worry about data cap (i move to another area or another provider opens up in my area), im dropping and i dont give a [Removed] about how much the cancellation fee will be, and i will never use this service ever again.

inappropriate content removed as required by the Verizon Wireless Terms of Service

Message edited by Verizon Moderator

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Re: Wish data allowances could be bigger:
Not applicable

dawg338 wrote:

While I'm not a fan of data allowances, I currently live in an area where the only alternative would be Hughes.net satellite or dial-up, so Verizon Homefusion broadband was the best choice.

Hughes.net gave good speeds but was inconsistant and there was considerable lag for the signal to go up to the satellite and back, so online gaming was out of the question. I cancelled the service after a month and found out about Verizon's option. We had to switch to Verizon on our cell phones due to no other reliable coverage in the area, so at least it is all under the same umbrella now.

One thing I would like to see is the data allowance tiers offering more gigs per month. I had to cancel Netflix because I'm sure it would have ate up most of the allowance. I noticed in Texas (I'm in Ohio.), that Comcast offers 300gb a month option for a decent cost! Of course, that is cable and we're talking the 4G celluar network here, but really with the mass amount of data being pushed through, 10, 20, 30gb is not enough.

Every month I get close to my cap without going over, but I don't stream movies or music or anything, so I have no idea where the data is coming from.

Anyway, I hope that Verizon will either get rid of data allowances altogether (which with laws being drafted now, they may have to), or offer a lot bigger options and not charge an arm and a leg for it.

Mobile data bandwidth is extremely limited. If say Verizon had a 300 GB cap and everyone in your area signed up for Verizon you would all complain about slow service since you'd have a lot of people all trying to stream video and the network could not handle that. 30 people trying to watch Netflix would use up all the bandwidth on a tower sector. In addition to other potential Homefusion users Verizon uses the same frequencies for cell phone data. I suppose if Homefusion used it's own frequencies the caps could be higher. I also suspect once Verizon kills off unlimited data or at least get the number of unlimited data users down significantly and has AWS enabled everywhere caps will probably go up.

It sucks that cable and telco refuse to expand internet to you area that's not really Verizon's responsibility to pick up their slack. Maybe you should ask you local government that you pay taxes to why they can't get cable or telco to offer service in your area.

Also there are no laws being drafted to force Verizon to offer higher caps.

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