Verizon Wireless is set to return to some form of usage-based pricing for its new LTE network when it rolls out later this year. In an interview with the Washington Post at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Verizon CTO Dick Lynch said the operator was looking to move away from the current flat rate ‘all you can eat’ data plans and instead begin charging users on the bandwidth they consume. “The problem we have today with flat-based usage is that you are trying to encourage customers to be efficient in use and applications but you are getting some people who are bandwidth hogs using gigabytes a month and they are paying something like megabytes a month,” Lynch said.
“That isn’t long-term sustainable. Why should customers using an average amount of bandwidth be subsidizing bandwidth hogs?” Lynch’s comments closely mirror those made by Ralph de la Vega - president and chief executive of rival operator, AT&T Mobility - who last month said that AT&T was looking at a “pricing scheme that addresses... usage” to deal with the problem of mobile data network congestion.
Elsewhere in the interview, Lynch outlined the many different types of devices that will be able to work on Verizon’s new network, noting that many of the devices would not necessarily be purchased from a Verizon store. “The whole paradigm of how we sell devices into the public is changing,” Lynch said. “At the same time that we announced LTE, we announced an open development initiative where we encouraged third-party developers to deploy devices on our network.” Verizon Wireless' new LTE network is expected to be available in 25 to 30 US markets this year, making it one of the first and largest commercial LTE deployments in the world.
source: GSMA MBB
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