Tuesday, January 11, 2005

3G by Verizon, for Dirt Cheap

The news is out at CES: "unlimited high speed wireless data services for only $15 a month" from Verizon Wireless. This is huge news for the road warrior. Not only did Verizon expand EVDO from 2 to 32 markets over the past year, but they dropped the price from $80 to $15 per month. I'll pay that for untethered freedom and quality throughput of 150kbps to 500kpbs (and even 2Mbps in theory).

Verizon currently has EV-DO service in 32 major markets and has expanded on its initial launches in the New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami, Baltimore, Kansas City, Mo., and Milwaukee metropolitan areas. For the last several months, Verzion Wireless said it has been conducting a consumer trial among 1000 users in its Washington, D.C. and San Diego markets--the first two markets to launch--in order to study consumer adoption, usage patterns and handset performance. The new consumer service, called Vcast will be available in all of those markets in February alongside its Broadband Access business service. VCast will cost $15 over the cost of regular wireless calling plans and will include unlimited access to specified content supplied by Verizon’s partners as well as unlimited Web browsing. Enhanced features and premium content will come at additional cost.

I can't wait to see how this takes off. And, I'm sure that the folks over at Sprint are as anxious as I am. If Verizon really gears up this service in a broad commercial launch in the next weeks, Sprint may be sucking wind to catch up.

posted by Charles @ Tuesday, January 11, 2005