Verizon recently made a major announcement on price adjustments that would be coming to its plans. The carrier will be increasing the price of the plans that it offers to subscribers, but it will also be adding higher data allocations to reflect the data-heavy usage trend of customers.
Verizon will also be adding new features to its plans such as Carryover Data, which will roll over unused data to succeeding months, and Safety Mode, which will safeguard customers from having to pay overage fees for using up too much data.
It was rumored that Verizon will be bringing Safety Mode to its prepaid customers, as reported by Droid Life. However, it said that while postpaid customers on the S, M and L plans will have to pay a monthly charge of $5 to avail of Safety Mode, prepaid customers will get their version of Safety Mode for free.
Safety Mode for Verizon's prepaid customers, named Always-On Data, has now been confirmed by the company, with the feature to be made available on July 17 to all prepaid subscribers regardless of the data plan that they signed up for.
However, as with Safety Mode for postpaid subscribers, Always-On Data will throttle the data speeds of customers to 128 kbps after they have used up their allocated data for the billing cycle. The speed is certainly slow, but it will allow customers to remain connected to the internet for low-data purposes such as sending online messages.
Verizon currently offers three prepaid plans, with all plans coming with unlimited calls and texts within the United States and unlimited texts to Canada and Mexico. The first plan for $30 per month restricts data usage to Wi-Fi connections, the second plan for $45 a month gives the user a monthly 3 GB of 4G LTE data and the mobile hotspot feature, and the third plan for $60 a month gives the users a monthly 6 GB of 4G LTE data, the mobile hotspot feature and unlimited calls to Canada and Mexico.
With the introduction of Always-On Data, it is becoming more apparent that Verizon is looking to gain back its market share in the prepaid market, after losing customers to AT&T's Cricket Wireless and T-Mobile's MetroPCS.
Verizon has received criticism from its planned price hike for its data plans, which will not be applied to contracts that have already been signed. The new prices will take effect on Aug. 21 for new subscribers or customers renewing their contracts.
