Verizon Rolls Out Low-Cost Data Plans on Feature Phones
Verizon Wireless and Samsung are rolling out two new feature phones with messaging in mind, the Rogue and Intensity. The mobile phones offer a fairly standard feature set for today’s market, but analysts said Verizon’s data plan for the feature phones gives consumers something to talk about.
The Samsung Rogue is a messaging phone with a full-touch display and a horizontal slide-out, four-row QWERTY keyboard. The phone offers threaded messaging and one-touch access to social-networking widgets, including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Photobucket.
The Samsung Intensity is for communications-minded consumers. It offers a full line of advanced messaging capabilities such as mobile IM, text, picture and voice messaging with threaded messaging, mobile e-mail, and a mobile Web browser. The Intensity features a QWERTY keyboard for messaging.
“The Intensity is a QWERTY messaging phone with a 12-button keypad on the front for $30. That’s well priced in a good form factor,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. “The Rogue is a full touchscreen with a sliding QWERTY, and we’ve certainly seen that’s a popular form factor as well. The Rogue is $99. That’s not quite as good a value, but when compared to some of the other devices at Verizon, it’s certainly competitive. But the story here is the service plans.”
Low-Cost Data Plans
The Samsung Rogue is the flagship phone for Verizon’s new data-pricing option. The just-introduced data plans let Verizon Wireless customers decide how much data and the type of data they want to use. Samsung Rogue customers who want to check e-mail, surf the Web, and download applications, games or ringtones can choose a 25MB plan for $9.99 a month or 75MB for $19.99. Those fees are in addition to the standard nationwide plan for voice.
“While there’s nothing all that unique about the phones themselves, the data plans Verizon is going out with are unique,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. “This is the first time that Verizon, or any carrier in the U.S., is offering a lower-tier consumer-oriented data plan.”
Data plans typically cost $30 a month and cater to smartphone users. With options as low as $10 a month, Greengart said, Verizon is getting people to sign up for data plans on what ordinarily would be normal feature phones. Although it’s difficult to predict if other carriers will begin offering lower-priced data plans, Greengart said he’s been waiting for the concept to emerge for some time.
“The carriers are trying to push consumers up to smartphones,” he said. “While that makes a lot of sense for some people, it’s too much money for some and overkill for others.”
Video on Demand
Customers who want to watch full-length TV shows plus news, sports, weather and live entertainment video clips can also add Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Video on Demand plan. The plan gives customers access to unlimited basic video clips, ESPN MVP, and unlimited megabytes for their V CAST Video usage for $10 a month.
The Samsung Rogue is available today for $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement, and the Samsung Intensity in charcoal grey is available for $29.99 after a $50.00 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement.