Verizon?s Share Everything plans: Will a new plan cost you more?

Would one of Verizon's new Share Everything plans cost you more or less than your current plan? Read on to find out.?

By Avram Piltch,?LAPTOP Online Editorial Director / June 13, 2012

FILE - In this 2011 photo, a manager of the Verizon store in Beachwood, Ohio, holds up an Apple iPhone 4G. Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest cellphone company, announced Tuesday that is dropping nearly all of its phone plans in favor of pricing schemes that encourage consumers to connect their non-phone devices, like tablets and PCs, to Verizon's network.

Amy Sancetta/AP/File

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This week, Verizon announced the launch of its long-awaited shared?data?plan. Dubbed ?Share Everything,? the new plan allows you to purchase data in chunks of 1 to 10GB and share it among all your family?s devices, from smartphones to tablets or even netbooks. In a world where carriers have traditionally charged separate data fees for each device you own, the new pricing structure sounds like a breath of fresh air. However, if you do the math, you might end up spending more money than what your paying for Verizon?s current lineup of voice and data options.

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Fortunately, current Verizon customers will not have to give up their existing plans, even when they upgrade their phones and renew their contracts. The?one?exception is that users who have been grandfathered into unlimited data plans will have to switch to limited data if they want to upgrade their phones at subsidized prices. New Verizon customers who sign up after June 27th will only be eligible for Share Everything. If you were planning to sign up as a new Verizon customer and don?t like these plans, now?s the time to act.?

So, current and future Verizon subscribers, are the new Share Everything plans a good deal for you? It really depends on how much you talk and text and how many devices you have.

Plan Details

Adding up the cost of the Share Everything plan is so simple even a third grader can do it. You simply pay a device fee for each device you use and a data fee for your shared pool of data. The device fee is $40 per smartphone, $20 per notebook or 4G modem and $10 per tablet. ?

You then buy a block of data ranging in size from 1GB to 10GB and in price from $50 to $100. If you?re the type of person who primarily uses Wi-Fi at home and the office and only reads email and surfs the web while out without consuming multimedia, you may be able to get by on don?t plan to watch a lot of streaming movies or tether to a notebook, we recommend 1 to 2GB of data per user, but if you expect to do either of those things we?d go with 4GB of data per user.

Good for Talk and Text

If you make a lot of voice calls or do a lot of SMS messaging, the Share Everything plans are a good deal because they provide unlimited minutes and texts. For just $40 per smartphone, you can talk or SMS message to your heart?s content, something that, on the current rate structure, costs $89.99 per month for an individual ($69.99 + $20) or a whopping $179.98 for two lines on a family share plan.

When you add data, the Share Everything plan costs $100 ($40 + $60) to provide a user with unlimited voice and text plus 2GB of data while the traditional plan costs $119.99 for the same thing. For a family of two, the cost of two smartphones with 4GB split between them is $150 a month, much better than the $239.98 it would cost under the current rate plans. If those users can get by with just 2GB between them, that price is just $140 a month.

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