Verizon Price Increase Coming – Who Will Be Affected?

It’s been about two weeks now that AT&T legacy subscribers got a shock that AT&T would be raising their prices in June. Verizon is now jumping on that same bandwagon and increasing prices for consumer and business accounts.  

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg first mentioned increasing prices back in April, saying that inflation was to blame. While he did not say they were definitely coming, he instead said that the carrier had “plans to be prepared for what it takes,” including “different types of cost adjustments.”

It has actually been two years since Verizon has raised prices for these customers. Although back in late 2021, the carrier increased prices on customers grandfathered into older plans.

As first reported by Bloomberg (and confirmed by Verizon reps), Verizon has taken an interesting approach to how they are advertising the rising prices. Instead of raising the actual plans, they will instead begin adding a new “economic adjustment charge” to your bill every month.

According to Verizon, the “economic adjustment charge” will be $1.35 per voice line for consumers. Note that we said voice as the increase applies only to voice lines per account. 

Business customers will receive a larger increase every month, with data plans increasing by $2.20 per month and “basic service plans” increasing by $0.98 per month.

Verizon began alerting consumers of this new “economic adjustment charge” yesterday, while it has also been in direct contact with “some of its larger corporate clients” recently. They say pricing will go up starting in June and the “economic adjustment charge” will apply to ALL plans.

5G Increases Overall Data Usage

As cellular technologies grow, so does our need for content and therefore, our consumption of data. According to a recent report from Ericsson, average mobile data usage is over 10GB per month. Ericsson attributes this increase by only two factors. 

Mobile data is more readily available and since most users are on cell phones usage is higher than on fixed broadband services. 

The amount of mobile broadband routers have also risen. Think about all the people who had to start working from home. Those in more rural areas found a sudden need for a stable connection with high bandwidth, but no access to wired services. LTE Advanced and 5G technology have made this more possible. Sure, there are battery powered mobile hotspots, but they generally don’t have the power, nor the features to support everything a work-from-home employee requires.  

It’s easy to rack up data on your cellular connection using a mobile broadband router compared to your cell phone. No longer is it just you browsing the web or making video calls, but now everyone in your home or office is using the same connection. The report – Ericsson’s Mobility Report – shows mobile data usage hit 11GB per month in both the US and Western Europe.

Also something to note, according to a study by Pew Research, some 15% of US adults are now mobile-only internet users – meaning they don’t have a home broadband connection, but instead rely solely on their smartphone. Smartphone ownership has increased to 85%, up from 81% in 2019.

If this trend continues, the monthly global average usage per smartphone is forecast could reach 35GB by the end of 2026. Smartphones continue to be at the epicenter of this development as they generate most of the mobile data traffic – about 95 percent – today, a share that is projected to increase throughout the forecast period.