Verizon said that its new pricing plans, introduced last week, are more popular among new and existing customers than either the "Verizon Plan" it introduced in 2015 or the "Share Everything" plan Verizon introduced in 2012. Specifically, the carrier said that nearly 95 percent more customers signed up to be on the new Verizon plans during the past week than during the first week of availability of Share Everything in 2012. Verizon added that customers during the past week brought more than double the amount of lines than they did on Share Everything during that plan's first week of availability.
"They love the value of the plans," explained Lou Ambio, Verizon's executive director of consumer pricing, in an interview with FierceWireless. "I think the value prop has resonated better than ever before."
Verizon disclosed its first-week sales figures for its new pricing plans to FierceWireless to highlight how successful the plans are compared with Verizon's previous price plan launches. However, the carrier could only provide general percentages and not specific customer numbers; Verizon is scheduled to report its second-quarter results July 26 and is therefore in its financial "quiet period."
However, the figures Verizon provided show that Verizon's new pricing plans appear to be the most popular pricing plans the carrier has released in the past several years, outpacing the popularity of both Verizon's Share Everything plans released in 2012 and the "Verizon Plan" released in 2015.
Verizon introduced its Share Everything plans June 28, 2012, when roughly 47 percent of the carrier's 88.8 million postpaid customers owned smartphones. Ambio described the plans as "revolutionary" because they introduced the concept of shared data and unlimited talking and texting to Verizon's customer base.
Then, on August 13, 2015, Verizon replaced Share Everything with the "Verizon Plan," which offered S to XXL buckets of data. At the time the carrier counted 103.7 million retail postpaid customers and 70.6 smartphones.
Verizon said just 65 percent of the number of customers who migrated to Share Everything on day one moved to the new "Verizon Plan" on the first day of that new plan's availability. In the first seven days of that plan's availability, the number of customers signing up for the "Verizon Plan" was 93 percent of the amount of customers who signed up for Share Everything in the first week of that plan's availability.
However, Verizon said its latest pricing plans, introduced last week, have proven far more popular than its "Verizon Plan" in 2015. The carrier said 30 percent more customers migrated to the new Verizon plans on the first day than did on the first day of our introduction of Share Everything. And the carrier said nearly 95 percent more customers signed up to be on the new Verizon plans than did during the first week of Share Everything.
Ambio explained that the new plans offer customers 30 percent more data on average, though the plans cost slightly more per month than Verizon's previous pricing options. The plans also offer "Carryover Data" and "Safety Mode" that allow customers to roll over their unused data for one month, and to avoid data overage charges by having their download speeds throttled to 128 Kbps, respectively.
Ambio also noted that Verizon now counts far more smartphone customers among its customer base than in 2012 – roughly 85 percent of Verizon's 107 million retail postpaid customers owned smartphones at the end of the first quarter – which likely aided interest in Verizon's new data plans.
"It's just a lower cost per gigabyte," he said. "It's more appealing to more people."
Ambio also said that activations of Verizon's new plans are "skewing to the higher plans." He attributed this to the fact that more customers are now signed up to family plans and enterprise plans than before, and therefore want larger buckets of data.
"We're very happy with the mix of customers on the plans," he said. "We're meeting expectations."
Ambio declined to comment on whether Verizon would bring its Carryover Data and Safety Mode options to its prepaid pricing plans; Droid Life reported the carrier would offer throttled data to its prepaid customers starting next week.
Interestingly, Ambio also said Verizon has never forced customers off their existing plans, so customers don't have to move onto the carrier's new plans. He said that Verizon likely still has customers on the pricing plans it acquired from Alltel. "We have not done forced migration," he said. "We have customers on plans that are years and years old."
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As expected, Verizon increases prices, raises data allotments, intros data carryover and throttling