Verizon Wireless will be announcing new prepaid plans that offer customers more data at a price at par with T-Mobile's own Simply Prepaid plan.
America's biggest mobile carrier by subscriber base has not yet announced its plan, but Phandroid cites insider sources who claim that starting Mar. 1, Verizon will be offering a new $60 prepaid plan that provides customers unlimited calls, SMS and 2.5 GB of 4G LTE data for every 30-day period.
By comparison, T-Mobile's own prepaid plan offers 2.5 GB of data per month and unlimited calls and text for $60.
Verizon's plan will also include unlimited texting to Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico and has room for an additional 1,000 minutes of calls to Mexico and Canada for an additional $10. Customers who sign up for Verizon's Auto Pay will also receive another 500 MB of extra data, giving them a total of 3 GB of data every month for $60.
Verizon is also giving its older $35 and $45 plan a minor revamp. Previously, both plans offered 500 minutes of calls and unlimited texts, but the new plans will now include unlimited calling and texting to anywhere in the United States and unlimited texting to Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico. The data level for the $35 plan will stay the same at 500 MB, but the $45 plan has already increased to 1 GB. Verizon will also throw in the extra 500 MB for customers who sign up through Auto Pay.
The report comes just days after AT&T announced that it will bump its data offering on its GoPhone prepaid plans. The $60 plan, which previously offered 2.5 GB of 4G LTE data, now offers 4 GB, while the lower-end $45 plan will get a 500 MB bump to 1.5 GB. The plans also include unlimited calls and SMS, with the $45 plan including unlimited texting to Mexico, Canada and 100 other countries, and the $60 plan including unlimited calls to Mexico.
Earlier this month, Verizon also announced that it was slashing $10 off most of its postpaid plans, a rare move that indicates Big Red must have been affected by the continuous price cuts and promos being offered by T-Mobile and Sprint as they aggressively attempt to one-up each other and catch up to Verizon and AT&T.
Previously, the two biggest wireless carriers in the U.S. refused to heed T-Mobile's challenge to a price war, relying on the strength of their network coverage to convince customers to remain and competitors' subscribers to switch. Although Verizon announced 2 million new subscribers in the last quarter, most of the new signups were customers buying tablets, which do not have as much recurring profits as smartphones.
