into-the-blue.com

Or is Verizon Wireless trying to completely screw people over with their new wireless plans? It’s about time for my 2 year contract to be renewed, so I thought I’d take a look at their new plans to see what they’re offering (and, being the technogeek that I am, I thought I’d also see what new phones are around).

My current plan includes something like 450 minutes for $39.95/month, 500 text/pix messages for $5/month extra and unlimited data for Mobile Web 2.0 totaling about $45.00/month before the anal rape known as “taxes” occurs and pushes it up to something like $60/month. On the premise that only death and taxes are certainties, I’ve learned to live with that price hike. I use Mobile Web fairly extensively for checking email, weather and for browsing porn, so I find it extremely useful to have Mobile Web 2.0.

However, Verizon Wireless’ new price-equivalent plan - the “basic” $39.99 plan has an “interesting” twist. They now want to charge $1.99/Mb - $1.99 per megabyte - of data downloaded via Mobile Web. They also want to charge you that same $1.99/Mb for downloading applications in addition to paying for the freaking pile of cow dung that most of those things are. I probably download more than 1Mb per day of email, news, weather and such.

They do, of course, have a plan that is feature-equivalent to that which I currently have. For the sum of $79.95/month I can get the same features that I now have for $45.00/month - an increase of 77% - or I can just opt to not renew my contract, continue as a month-month customer with them and never renew my contract again.

Or I could go to T-Mobile and get 600 minutes/month + unlimited data/web access for $45.00/month.