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Sign up for those data plans now, Verizon Wireless customers, as the carrier will replace its unlimited options with tiered services as early as next month.
According to information passed to Droid Life today, Big Red will begin providing three options to customers on July 7: a 2GB plan at $30 per month, a 5GB plan at $50 per month, and a 10GB at plan $80 per month.
Users hoping to tether their device will pay an additional $20 per month, but also receive an extra 2GB of data. Should a customer go over his or her allotted plan, overages are billed at a rate of $10 for each extra gigabyte of data. The tablet plan of 1GB for $20 per month will go away as well, replaced by the new 3GB for $20 per month.
Existing customers will be grandfathered into their current plan and should be unaffected by the new rate plans. Droid-Life reports that current subscribers should have the option to upgrade to a new handset without being forced to give up their unlimited plans.
When reached for a comment, Verizon representative Brenda Raney advised AllThingsD that Verizon “will move to a more usage-based model in July,” adding that the company will “share more later.”
While the move will certainly upset heavier data users, a recent Nielsen study suggests many users are pulling down less than 1GB per month.
The move should see leave as the last major carrier to offer a real unlimited data plan (AT&T moved to tiered plans with the introduction of the iPhone 4 last year). Though T-Mobile also promotes an unlimited data plan, speeds are throttled once users reach a cap.
